Started by the Jealous People
by alliecat8697
Summary: Kensi is kidnapped by a past enemy of Deeks'. She escapes, but her escape takes her to an even more unfortunate fate. How cold can a person get? Densi. R&R, 8th and final chapter is up! COMPLETE, NO CLIFFHANGERS!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything whatsoever.**

**AN: Hey.(: This is my first fic for NCIS: LA. I've found it's a bit harder to write FanFiction for newer shows, like this, with only 3 seasons. And honestly I consider it to have two seasons because that's when Deeks came in and that's when I got interested.(: Anyway, just so you know, the title is totally suckish, I know. It's pretty random. Hopefully I can find a way to fit an explanation for it in the story lol. Anyway, read & review!**

* * *

"She's still not answering," Deeks informed Callen and Sam.

He had called her time after time, and she was twenty minutes late to work. She'd already missed the briefing of the case. She was never late, and the few times she _had _been more than five minutes late, something was always wrong. And now she wasn't answering her phone. Deeks couldn't stay calm, he was getting kind of worried.

"Should I go check on her?" Deeks suggested.

Callen and Sam were quiet for a second.

"Yeah. Only because she isn't answering her phone. That's not something Kensi does often, believe me." Sam said.

"I know, one time she answered her phone in the middle of-" Callen started.

"I'm going to go," Deeks said, not caring to hear the rest of Callen's story, which he already knew the ending to. He needed to get to Kensi's as quickly as possible.

The car ride to Kensi's house seemed longer than usual. Deeks was racked with concern, rightfully so, because when he got to her house, she wasn't there. Normally, he would have just considered the idea that she was on the road on the way to work, or she was off taking care of something or sleeping at a boyfriend's house. But Deeks knew she had been taken the second he entered her bedroom, because there were signs of struggle everywhere. His heart dropped to his stomach when he saw a crushed lamp shade on the floor, knocked off of her night stand, and blood drops on her carpet. Kensi's blinds were disproportionately arranged in a way that hinted someone being thrown up against them. Deeks went into her kitchen and saw a pan out on the counter, with blood on the handle.

He tried to catch his breath but found himself worrying in a way that probably was bad for his health. What if she was _dead?_ He couldn't even bring himself to think of it, of how he would feel if he didn't come to work and see her every morning. He couldn't think much past that, but he knew that she _could_ be dead. There was blood drops all over the house, and the fact that she was gone made him think that the blood was probably hers, not her kidnapper's…or killer's…or rapist's…

Suddenly Deeks found himself thinking of all the bad things that could have happened to her. His head spinning, he sat down on her couch. It smelled like her. He could almost feel her sitting next to him. He stood up, the smell of her mixed with the sight in front of him making him sick to his stomach. He pulled out his phone and called Sam.

"Kensi isn't here. There's signs of struggle. She's been taken."

Sam was quiet for a minute, sighing grimly into the phone. "Okay," he murmured, hanging up to tell Callen.

Deeks' heart racing, he ducked out of the house and looked around outside, hoping to see something, _anything,_ that could help him with Kensi's disappearance. But everything appeared to be completely normal. She had probably disappeared in the middle of the night, and nobody heard a thing.

* * *

Back at the pullpen, Deeks was driving everyone crazy with his anxious, constant questions. "Eric, have you gotten the footage of Kensi's neighborhood yet?"

"Working on it," he said.

Deeks paced a little longer, worrying himself more and more with every second that passed and he still had no information on Kensi's abduction. What if she was _dead? _There was no evidence that said she was alive…But Deeks had hope that she was alive. He thought she had to be, because it wouldn't make sense to just kill her. If someone hated her enough to kill her, they weren't going to give her a simple shot. They would be torturing her and inflicting as much pain as possible before they killed her. Although that thought made Deeks want to scream, it still sounded better than her being dead.

"I got the footage," he said, clicking a couple buttons and bringing it up on the big screen. He fast forwarded through it until he saw a blue car drive up. Then he played the tape.

The team watched as a man dressed in mostly black went in Kensi's house and closed the door behind him. A few awkwardly suspenseful moments later, Kensi's door opened and Kensi was drug out of the house by the man, definitely either unconscious or dead.

"She's not dead, right?" Deeks said, getting closer to the screen. Eric stopped it and zoomed in, and then played it again. Deeks inspected every part of her that he could see from the somewhat blurry tape.

"There aren't any gun shots, and her chest is rising and falling. She's definitely breathing. He probably knocked her out with that pan that I saw," Deeks said.

"Or used a cloth with ether. It would put her out in an instant," Callen suggested, running a hand through his hair worriedly.

"Can you zoom in on the license plate of the car?" Sam asked Eric.

Eric nodded and pushed a few buttons, pulling it up and then enhancing the image. The plate's letters and numbers became clearer.

"I'll run it through the system," Eric said, his fingers flying across his keyboard seemingly faster than usual. Deeks guessed that it was because his concern for Kensi was racking him with anxiety and making him jittery and nervous, naturally making him type faster. It was a very detailed analysis of why he was typing so fast. Deeks knew this only because he knew that if he was doing Eric's job, he'd be typing so fast the computer couldn't register the letters.

"The car belongs to a Mr. Percival-"

"Percy Vanderbilt," Deeks cut in, obviously recognizing the man from the picture.

"Who is he?" Sam questioned.

Deeks shook his head, running his hands through his hair. He couldn't believe this. "He, uh…I used to know him. When I was a teenager, I was friends with him. His parents were some really troubled people. The dad was an alcoholic, mom was a drug addict. One day, I heard a loud crash in the house. I was worried, so I called the police. They came, and, uh…Percy was taken away by Child Protective Services. As if I hadn't done enough damage, I had to testify in open court and tell what I knew about his parents, everything I had ever witnessed when I'd been at his house. I'm the reason they were put behind bars, and he was put into really bad foster care. I ran into him about a year ago, and we had a falling out. He said, quote, he hated me more than he would ever be able to hate anybody else. He said that the foster homes were way worse than his home. He told me he was molested and beat. I felt really bad, but that wasn't enough. He beat the shit out of me, and then he left. I haven't seen him since." Deeks signed and shook his head. "He's after me. He took Kensi to get to me. He knows I'll be looking," he said in a bitter, dull, resigned voice. He was beginning to figure it all out.

Callen and Sam exchanged a glance. "It's not your fault, Deeks. It's a good thing he's after you. It means that it won't be as hard to find Kensi as it could be. We will be able to get her back easily, if he's not too smart," Sam said, his mouth arranged in a flat line across his face.

"I just got an anonymous email tip with a video attachment," Nell said, looking to the team.

"Pull it up," Callen said.

A video popped up on the large screen, and the whole team watched as Kensi appeared. She was in a dull grey room, seated on a silver metal chair. Her arms were tied by, rather than the typical frayed rope, a few wires bundled as one. Deeks spotted blood running down her left hand, which was in view of the camera, and a small pool of blood was on the floor by her hands. Her feet were also bound to the legs of the chair by the same type of wire. Her nose was bloodied, and the blood was running down her face, soaking her lips and running past them onto her chin, making it look like she had been drinking blood.

She was staring straight into the camera, her eyes red and puffy. She opened her mouth slowly, but made a disgusted face when blood dripped onto her tongue. She spit onto the floor and opened her mouth to speak again.

"Deeks has to meet Vanderbilt at a location tomorrow at 9 a.m. The location is on a piece of paper attached to the side of the fridge at my house-"

Kensi stopped and bent her head down. "My eye hurts!" she started, looking off camera, obviously at Vanderbilt.

"Shut up," Vanderbilt said quietly, not showing his face still.

"Something is in my eye!"

"Shut the hell up!" Vanderbilt yelled. "Finish up, damn it."

Kensi looked back up at the camera. She started blinking rapidly, supposedly trying to get something out of her eye. "Get the location and meet him there alone," she said. She closed her mouth but continued blinking several times, blinking long blinks and then short ones. Finally she stopped and stared at the camera, giving them a knowing look and a subtle, reassuring nod. Then the screen went black.

"She was using Morse code. Nell, you know Morse code, right?" Deeks asked, staring at her.

"Yeah. Just give me a few minutes. That was a lot of letters. I'll go as fast as I can," she said. She sat down at her personal computer and played the video, writing down letters as she interpreted them. Deeks stood over her shoulder, watching the message progress onto paper.

"_Lies. At my house now. Kill Deeks."_

Deeks nodded and turned to Callen and Sam. "He said to go to Kensi's house to get the location off the fridge. But they're there now. They're probably in her basement, the room was grey. He's planning on killing me whenever I get there."

Sam nodded. "I'm glad Kensi knows Morse code," he commented.

"Let's go," Callen said, leading the way.

* * *

Kensi truly thought she was getting away with it. She thought that it would all work out. Deeks was going to show up to her house soon and he would be with Callen and Sam, and they would burst through the door, shoot this rotten bastard who was the cause of all the pain she was in at the moment, and it would all work out. She thought everything was going to be all right.

She felt Vanderbilt untying her. Once she felt all her limbs free of the wires, she kicked Vanderbilt as hard as she could. She then punched him in the gut, but he grabbed her by the neck and threw her against the wall. He pushed a gun to her head.

"Calm your ass down or I'll end you here and now. Your partner can walk into your house and find your brains splattered all over these walls," he whispered vehemently into her ear.

She knew she couldn't win this war because she was too weak and he had a gun. She believed that he would really kill her. So she stopped fighting. It wasn't worth it. She knew Callen and Sam and Deeks would be here within a few minutes anyway, so it didn't matter. Or so she thought, until he started dragging her out of her house back into the van that she had been kept in when she was initially kidnapped.

"Wait, where are we going?" she asked, nervousness eating the inside of her stomach like a wet battery.

"Sweetie, I'm not that stupid. I know what you were doing just now. There's nothing in your eye. I enlisted in the navy because it was my only chance at getting college paid for. I know Morse code. You just screwed up your partner's chances of getting you back by a lot."

**AN: Review please, it's the only thing that truly makes me write faster! **


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Thanks so much for the reviews! I really appreciate the constructive criticism and praise. I had two different people tell me it was strange for Callen to "run a hand through his hair worriedly." Hahahaha, now that I think about it, that was very strange wording and it did sound weird since his hair is so short! What I meant, the way I had it pictured, was him just putting his hand on his head in thought. But I didn't express that well. But yeah anyway thanks for the reviews, hope you guys enjoy this! (:**

* * *

"We've been here for ten minutes. I doubt he's coming back," Sam said. "He was supposed to be here when we got here."

"Then let's consider the possibility that Kensi was wrong. Check the fridge for a location, Deeks," Callen said.

Deeks walked into Kensi's kitchen and inspected the fridge. He looked everywhere associated with it. He looked on every side of the fridge, on top of it, underneath it, praying his eyes would come across a small piece of paper somewhere. But there wasn't anything on her fridge other than a few magnets.

"There's nothing here," Deeks said.

"He's not going to come back. We need to leave and try to find where else he could be keeping her," Callen said.

"I found all of the properties registered under the name of Percival Vanderbilt. He hasn't got much. A-"

Nell was interrupted by Deeks. "I'm getting an incoming call from a private number. I bet it's him," Deeks said. He pushed the talk button on his cell phone, and then put it on speaker.

"I bet you thought you were smart with your Morse code trick. I have to give you props, you've got a smart girl on your hands. But you already knew that. I'm texting you the name of a park. Meet me there at 10 o'clock tonight. If any agents are with you, they can expect death by a sniper. You can trade yourself for Kensi," Vanderbilt spoke.

"What makes you so sure I would trade myself for her?" Deeks asked.

Vanderbilt scoffed into the phone. "Look, Deeks. You're the one I want. Are you really going to let your partner die for you? If you're as in love with her as I think you are, you won't. I've got nothing left to say. Meet me or your partner dies."

Deeks opened his mouth to speak, but the line went dead. Vanderbilt had hung up. "Did you trace it?" Callen asked, looking at Eric.

Eric never had to be told to trace the call. "Yeah. Sent the address to your phones," he said.

The team-well, as much of a team as they could be without Kensi-took off to Sam's car.

When they got to the address, they found themselves in the parking lot of a large business building.

"Look for the blue car from the surveillance tape," Callen ordered.

The team separated and looked throughout the parking lot, on all sides of the building. Several minutes later, Deeks got a three way call from Sam and Callen.

"Anybody find it?" Callen asked.

"No."

"Nope."

"Yeah, me neither," Callen said. "He probably made the call from the parking lot and took off with her to somewhere else. Meet me back at the car."

A few minutes later, they were all three reunited at Sam's car. They got in the car, but then Deeks spotted something.

"Hey, look. There's a guy taking a smoke break. I bet he saw something," Deeks said.

"I'll ask him," Callen said.

Deeks and Sam waited in the car while Callen spoke to the guy. They spoke for just a minute or two before Callen reappeared in front of the car.

"He said he didn't see anything," he said in a bitter tone, getting in the car and driving away from the site.

Sam called Eric. "Hey. I need you to pull up any properties in Vanderbilt's name. Find the one closest to the address you gave us later. See if there's anywhere he could have taken her that has this business building on the route to get there."

Things were silent for a minute, as Sam put Eric on speakerphone and they listened to the sound of his fingers clicking buttons on his computer and keyboard.

"There's a small house he owns close to you. I'll send the address to your phones," Eric answered.

Callen nodded and pulled up the address whenever he heard his phone beep. They were close. They'd get Kensi back soon.

* * *

Kensi woke up and immediately felt the pain of the cuts on her hands, the knot on her forehead, her most likely broken nose, and bruised up body. She thought for a minute, and then remembered when Vanderbilt left her house with her. She remembered him holding his gun at his side and forcing her into his car once again. Then she remembered struggling and fighting against him, and him pushing a cloth up to her nose. She remembered trying desperately to breathe clean air but instead inhaling the substance on the cloth…Ether. He had drugged her with ether. Now she was in a room, a basement most likely. That's where she'd been kept before. But now she was in a different basement, not her own. Surprisingly, she wasn't tied up to a chair now. She actually wasn't tied up to anything. Vanderbilt was nowhere to be seen.

This was her chance, if she was going to be able to escape. This guy was an amateur. He wasn't a serial killer. It couldn't be that hard to get away from this place. She stood up, her head pounding, most likely from ether. Whenever she walked, her wounded ankles hurt because of the wires that had been keeping her bound to a chair earlier that day. She ignored her pain easily because she'd felt much worse before. She headed towards the door but found that it was locked. It didn't surprise her. Vanderbilt was pretty stupid, but anyone that was capable of kidnapping her was smart enough to know not to put her in an unlocked room freely and expect her not to easily get away. She thought of making a desperate attempt to kick down the door, but even if it worked, she knew Vanderbilt would realize the ether wore off and he would tie her up once again, and she'd be back at square one.

So instead, Kensi searched all around the basement for something to pick the lock with. She was surrounded by shelves that were cluttered with junk like hardware tools, pool supplies, cleaning substances-

Pool supplies. He had a pool. If she could find a way to throw him in the pool while she was running, that could definitely buy her some time.

She continued around the shelves. She found a small tote and grabbed it. She pulled off the lid to reveal pens and pencils…and alas, her knight in shining armor, a paperclip. She grinned and sighed in relief when she picked it up. She threw the tote back onto the shelf carelessly and unbent the paperclip into one straight little metal wire, like that of a clothing hanger, with a few dents from its previous shape. She ran, as painful as it was, to the door and stuck the disfigured paperclip into the keyhole. She wiggled it around a minute, one way and then the next, until it opened. She almost laughed from her relief, but she stayed serious, knowing she wasn't out yet. She walked slowly out of the basement and up the stairs, staying as silent as was possible. When she got up the stairs, she saw Vanderbilt sitting on the couch, sleeping. She let out a relieved breath. She knew he had to sleep at some point. He had kidnapped her in the middle of the night and had been up all day until now. She had slept plenty, since he'd kept her drugged half of the time she was with him. But what mattered now was that Vanderbilt was sound asleep on the couch and Kensi could surely escape if she didn't wake him up. She darted quietly into the kitchen. She was starving out of her mind. She chuckled a bit and grabbed a box of granola bars from his pantry. Then she quickly and quietly headed towards his back door. She slowly opened it but it squeaked loudly. She saw Vanderbilt's head snap around towards her. His eyes stared her down for a hundredth of a second before he jumped up. But Kensi was already out the door. She held tightly onto her unopened 12-pack of granola bars and sprinted to his gate. She struggled for a moment opening it, but she eventually got it open. She ran across the street, nearly getting hit by a car but making it just barely, whereas Vanderbilt wasn't so lucky. Even so, he ran past the car like it was no big deal. He was beginning to catch up to her. Kensi continued running until she was out of his neighborhood. He was right behind her, no more than 20 feet. She continued running, and slipped into an alley behind a large, temporarily closed restaurant. Unfortunately, when she got to the alley, she saw that it stretched just a short length until it stopped at a dead end just past the restaurant. She had nowhere to go. She was stuck, and Vanderbilt was running towards her quickly. She grabbed the doorknob to the back door of the restaurant and wiggled it for several moments before she started kicking it as hard as she could. Finally, it broke and she ran into the restaurant. Vanderbilt was still in the alley. She sprinted to the back of the restaurant. It was so dark. It was pitch black, because it was dark outside and the restaurant was closed. She wondered what time it was. Restaurants typically didn't close early in the night; that's when they got all their business. It had to be at least 9:30 or so.

Kensi struggled to find somewhere to go. Vanderbilt still wasn't in the restaurant. She felt around and finally felt a handle to a door. She grabbed it and was surprised when the door was very heavy to open. She opened it anyway, and darted inside. Hoping she could close the door before Vanderbilt got into the restaurant and heard it, she slammed it shut as hard and quickly as she could manage. Once she got inside, she immediately noticed how cold it was.

"Damn, it feels like a freezer in here," she said. She flipped on the light switch and realized it was because she was in a freezer. She tried not to laugh out loud at her irony. She was going to be really cold for a few minutes, but whenever she heard Vanderbilt leave the restaurant, she would get out of the freezer and she would finally be back with her team. She could go back, show up as a surprise and see Deeks.

She pressed her ear up against the metal door of the enormous walk-in freezer and listened. She heard footsteps getting closer to the freezer. She gasped and held her breath. She heard Vanderbilt twisting the handle she had used just a minute earlier to get into the freezer. _Shit,_ she thought. This was bad. She got prepared to punch him the moment the door opened, but surprisingly, the door never opened. She heard the handle twisting but it never opened. _That's weird,_ she thought. He had definitely tried to open it. It had opened just a second ago when she tried.

Kensi heard his footsteps trailing off. A few minutes later, everything was silent. She sighed in relief. She really was going to get to see Deeks within the next hour. It was time to get out of this freezer, she was freezing.

Kensi chuckled a little at the literal aspect of her situation and grabbed the large metal handle of the freezer door. She pulled it and it didn't open. She frowned. It really was a heavy door. She tugged harder. It didn't even budge. It hadn't been this hard to open when she went inside! Something was wrong…

She pulled as hard as she could on the freezer door, and it didn't open. It didn't move at all.

"What the hell is this?" she said out loud, getting frustrated and already beginning to think of the worst outcome.

Maybe there was some kind of trick to it. She inspected the handle, looking for anything to slide or twist or turn, or pull or push. There was nothing. It was simply a handle. And that handle was _not_ getting the door to open.

Kensi pulled on the door, struggling and getting very panicked. Her heart was beating heavily against her chest, nervousness rising up inside her. She turned the handle up and down, pulling the door the whole time. It was no hope. The door wasn't opening.

She was stuck in a freezer, without a cell phone, and with her team thinking that she was being held captive by a pesky amateur kidnapper. She could only dream of being back with her kidnapper. Her situation now was a lot worse than that. She was literally stuck in a freezer.

And she was beginning to get very, _very_ cold.

* * *

**AN: So I know that was pretty random and scary. But I said in the summary that it was going to be different than you thought it would be! It's pretty sad, but hang in there with me! Btw, I kind of wanted to change the title because I didn't plan on this happening lol, but I thought it would be confusing to change it! So please just try to look past the fact that the title literally makes no sense at all haha. (: Anyway, Give me reviews please! I write very long chapters so you never know, everything could work out in the next chapter! Just review please, thanks! (: **


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Thanks for the reviews, I'm glad y'all are liking this(: Haha, I swear my chapters just keep getting longer & longer. This should probably be 2 chapters lol but whatever.**

* * *

"There's Vanderbilt. I'll meet him. You guys stay right here. I think he was lying about the sniper, but stay back here just in case," Deeks said, walking towards Vanderbilt quickly. His gun was in the back of his pants, and if Vanderbilt didn't hand over Kensi immediately, he would use it. He was so ready to see her safe and alive. He was ready to crack jokes with her again, to see her smile, hear her laugh. He was ready for her to be back.

Their plan was to get Kensi and successfully make the exchange. Deeks would get in the car with Vanderbilt and everything would go smoothly, so that if there actually was a sniper watching for any agents, it would be off guard since everything was going fine. Then Sam and Callen would follow Vanderbilt to wherever he was taking Deeks and eventually move in. There was, of course, the worry that Vanderbilt could kill Deeks the second he got in the car with him. But it seemed highly unlikely that Vanderbilt would want to kill him without having a chat and inflicting a little more pain than a quick shot to the head.

"Where's Kensi?" Deeks yelled when he was within hearing range of Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt pointed a gun at Deeks. "I don't have her."

Deeks felt like he couldn't breathe. What if he had killed her? "What do you mean, you don't have her?" he questioned.

"She escaped."

"I don't believe you," Deeks replied.

Sam spoke to Deeks through the phone. "Deeks, he has her. He's lying. She's probably still in the car."

Deeks nodded, as if it made any sense to do so. "You aren't leaving here with both of us. Give me Kensi, _now,_" Deeks said, with renewed confidence since he was more sure that Kensi was in the car.

"I don't have her. But I'm about to have you," he said.

The second Deeks heard the words come out of Vanderbilt's mouth, he darted to the side and barely missed the bullet headed for him. Vanderbilt shot at him again, but he had continued running to the side and missed a bullet yet again. He took a careful shot to Vanderbilt's leg and knocked him off his feet. He wasn't, by any means, going to suffer fatal damage, but he was hurt enough that he wouldn't try to take any more shots.

Deeks headed over to him and took his gun. He put it in the back of his pants and kept his own gun at his side. Sam and Callen were now right behind him, they'd moved in whenever they heard the first gun shot. Deeks hadn't needed them, but they'd been there just in case. They took care of Vanderbilt while Deeks opened his car door to get Kensi.

"Kensi?" he asked, looking through the car. His heart dropped with a pathetic thud when he realized that Vanderbilt wasn't lying; Kensi had escaped. At first his heart dropped. But then he realized what it really meant. It meant that Kensi was okay. It meant she was going to call them any minute from a random phone that wasn't hers, and she was going to tell them to meet her back at the bullpen. Or it meant that Kensi was already back at the workplace, waiting for them. Deeks couldn't hide his grin. He was ready to see her.

"Kensi isn't here. He wasn't lying; she escaped. She'll probably call us any minute now," Deeks said to Callen and Sam.

"We'll go back to wait," Sam said.

* * *

Kensi still hadn't given up on attempting to get out of the freezer. She was very cold, because all she was wearing was a short sleeved blue shirt and jeans. But she was going to keep trying to get out of there.

She pushed her foot up against the side of the door and grabbed the handle. She yanked on the door roughly, pushing her foot against the door frame as hard as she could, hoping the opposing force would cause the door to open. But it didn't. Of course it didn't. Nothing was working.

Why had she closed it so damned hard that she had jammed the door? Why couldn't she have just lightly closed the door, and ran back behind a shelf or something when Vanderbilt came for her? Why hadn't she just let Vanderbilt find her? Anything would be better than sitting in here, freezing to death. _Anything_.

What made her time in the freezer so much more painful was knowing that Deeks thought she was still with Vanderbilt, and he was probably captured for nothing. What if Deeks was killed by Vanderbilt because he thought Kensi was there?

All of this could happen, simply because Kensi had slammed the door to the freezer when she went inside. Deeks _could_ be killed, she _could_ freeze to death. Right now, being as cold and weak as she was feeling, she couldn't help but be extremely pessimistic. There wasn't a bright side. Best case scenario, Deeks _didn't_ get taken by Vanderbilt, and he found out that she escaped. But then what? Then he would think she was coming back to him soon, and she was fine, while she actually froze to death. And that was just the best case scenario.

Kensi tried not to cry. She was stronger than this usually. But she was so weak right now, not just because she was in a freezer, but because she had cuts all over her and she had been away from her team too long. She missed them.

Kensi had to stop thinking. Her mind was getting dangerous for her. Her mind was causing her to give up hope. She had to stop using her mind for pessimism. She had to use her mind logically, to help her find a way out of this freezer.

She stood up from where she was sitting by the door, and decided to look around for a way out again. There had to be a way to fix the door. She knew there was no way she could get out of anywhere other than the door. She was in a stainless steel walk-in freezer. There was no way to bust open stainless steel. She would have to figure out how to fix the door.

She walked to the door and looked to see what was causing the problem. She looked into the crack between the door and its frame, to see why it wasn't opening. Unfortunately, the crack was so small that she couldn't see through it or see the structure of the door's handle whatsoever. It looked so simple, in a dangerous way. The door literally had one simple handle that had to be turned in order to open the door. The handle worked just fine, but something had to be wrong with the side of the door since it wouldn't open. There had to be some sort of peg that wasn't pulling out of its hole. That was the only explanation of why it wasn't working.

Kensi went to inspect the door hinges, trying to ignore the fact that she literally couldn't feel half of her fingers anymore. It was like she had no control over them, yet in a strange way she did. It just felt like she didn't.

Teeth chattering loudly, she looked at the hinges above her and below her. She had to find a way to get them off of the door. She sat down on the floor, hating it because the floor was so cold and made her feel even more frozen. She desperately tried to ignore how cold and numb she was, and inspected the hinge, blinking every couple of seconds to keep her eyes moist. She started to pick at the screws, but they weren't budging. She twisted them as much as she could, even though she couldn't feel her fingers. They weren't moving though, and she highly doubted she would find a screw driver in a food freezer. Since the bottom one wasn't budging, Kensi tried the top one. She stood on the tips of her toes to reach it, but it wasn't worth it. The screws on the top one weren't budging whatsoever either. She went back to the bottom one, hoping to have more of a chance with it. She twisted a screw as much as she could, and she continued trying. Finally, she saw a tiny bit of movement of the screw. She couldn't feel it, because she still couldn't feel her fingers, but she could see it. She continued twisting it as well as she could, and it was a very slow process that required utmost patience, but the screw was slowly becoming loose. Finally, it was loose enough that she could twist it with a bit of ease. It came out eventually, and Kensi grinned a bit. But once it was out, it didn't make any difference. The door was exactly the same as it was before she had taken out the screw. But it would make a difference if she could get the other screw out. She started to pick at the other screw. She twisted it as hard as she had twisted the other one. It wasn't working, but she tried again. It didn't work once again, but she tried more. She continued attempting to get it lose, twisting it as well as she could with her frozen fingers, but it wasn't working. She spent several minutes straight trying to get the screw loose, but she had to give up eventually. There was no way it was going to come undone.

Kensi had to face the fact that she wasn't going to get out of this freezer by herself. There was no way possible. She was stuck in there until somebody else found her and took her out.

Assuming that she'd been in the freezer for about an hour, it had to be about 11:00-12:00 at night. If the restaurant was opening back up at lunchtime tomorrow, since it was a dinner restaurant and wouldn't possibly open in the morning time, that would mean that she could possibly be out of this freezer within 12 or 13 hours. That was a really long time…That was too long. But she could probably live if she didn't go to sleep within the next 13 hours. If she stayed awake, and did everything possible to keep her body temperature up, she could live. She just had to stay awake, and she had to keep moving.

Kensi stepped back from the door. "Just keep moving," she told herself. She repeated it several times in her head. "Just keep moving. Just keep moving. Just keep moving." She started to jog around the freezer. At first, she just felt freezing cold and running out of breath. But then, she started to feel warmer. Her body got warmer whenever she ran, so she ran faster and continued going. "Just keep going, Kensi," she told herself.

* * *

"She still hasn't called, or answered her phone, and obviously she isn't here. Should I check her house? I think she would have contacted us by now if she was okay," Deeks said, looking from Sam to Callen, and then back to Sam.

"She would have. Check her house," Callen replied.

Deeks nodded and left Sam and Callen. He was worried out of his mind. All the relief he'd felt when he realized Kensi had really escaped from Vanderbilt was wiped out of his mind. He was worried again. He wasn't sure how much longer he could handle her disappearance. He needed her back with him. And when she was back, he was going to talk to her about their thing. Because now that she was gone, and now that he felt like he was going crazy without her, he knew there really was a thing. There had to be. Other people in his life had disappeared before, his past partners had been taken captive before, but he'd never felt like this. He'd never been so heavily racked with concern in his life. He felt like he couldn't sit down for five seconds until he found her.

When he got to Kensi's house, he wasn't surprised when he found that she wasn't there, and nothing had changed at her house. He shook his head, his last bit of hope to find her draining out of his system.

He called Sam. "We can officially declare her missing again," Deeks said. He spoke the one sentence, and then hung up the phone quickly. He felt like he couldn't breathe when he looked at all of Kensi's furniture. He looked at her couch, and he could picture her sitting there, her knees by her chest and her legs pushed out to the side, eating a burger and laughing (not at the same time). He could see her mismatched eyes twinkling with amusement when she spoke to him.

Deeks sat down on the couch next to her. "Kensi, where are you? You've got me really worried."

Deeks' imagination of Kensi was looking into his eyes, but she didn't reply. She didn't give him any answers. She just looked at him, grinning like everything was okay when it wasn't.

"Come on, Kens. Don't give me the silent treatment. I hate when you do that," Deeks said. "I know you think you're funny, torturing me like this. I can see it in your eyes. But it isn't funny. I'm going insane," he admitted. "We really need to talk about our 'thing.' I think I'm starting to take it more seriously, now that you're gone. I know that's not really fair to you, that I couldn't talk about it when you were here with me. But I've just avoided it, I guess because I'm not exactly the serious discussion type. I'm ready though, now. I need you to tell me where you are so we can figure this thing out," he said.

Kensi wasn't changing. She was still just sitting there, smiling at him with a closed mouth. He stood up, knowing he was going crazy and he needed to stop talking to his imagination. He turned his back to the figment of Kensi and walked towards her door. When he turned around and took a last glance at her couch, she was gone. He bitterly sighed and closed the door. He wasn't sure how much longer he could go before he went completely insane and wasn't able to realize that the Kensi he'd just seen was his imagination.

* * *

Kensi bent over, putting her now unfrozen hands on her knees, panting. She had been running for a bit, probably about 20 minutes. Now she wasn't as cold. She was back warmed up. As long as she kept moving, she had to be okay. She was still cold; it was, in fact, no more than -5 degrees Fahrenheit in this freezer. But she was warm enough that she didn't expect to freeze to death any time soon. She was tired now though. She was getting to be very tired. She couldn't go to sleep though, or else she would freeze. She had to take a break from running though.

She walked back to the freezer door and sat down beside it. She grabbed the box of granola bars she had stolen from Vanderbilt and ate a few. She had completely forgotten about eating. She hadn't had anything in at least 28 hours or so. She was past the point of hunger. It was more like she was in a state of weakness from food deprivation. She just felt strangely empty, rather than hungry. Once she ate a couple of granola bars, her stomach started growling angrily and she began to regain a normal feeling of hunger. She ate another one and then threw the box to the side, deciding three was enough for now.

She began to get cold again, her fingers once again going numb. She'd been able to feel them for about five minutes after she'd been running for awhile, but now they were going back to the way they were. The tip of her nose had been somewhat frozen for awhile now, and running hadn't helped that get better. He ears were also starting to go numb. The air she inhaled was cold and painful to her nose. She opened her mouth and started to breathe through her mouth, although it started to get dry very quickly and she had to shut it.

She was so tired. She just wanted to take a short nap. She wanted to just close her eyes, just for a while…

"_No!"_ she told herself. "Stay awake, Kensi, stay awake." She knew that if she fell asleep, she would surely freeze to death.

She didn't want to run again, because whenever she ran, she panted and had rough breathing, and it was so painful to breathe in such cold air. She couldn't run again. She was so sleepy…

Trying to get herself to stop thinking of sleep, Kensi decided to sing. She didn't know what else to do. What could she sing that was encouraging? What would help her stay up? She had to stay positive. She thought of a song and began to sing loudly, even though her voice came out rough and cracked because of how dry her throat was.

"_You're not alone, together we stand. I'll be by your side, you know I'll take your hand," _she started. She pictured Deeks, hoping the incentive of him could keep her from giving up and going to sleep.

"_When it gets cold, and it feels like the end, there's no place to go, you know I won't give in." _

Kensi felt a tear run down her cheek. She wasn't sure how much longer she could stay awake in here. She was so cold. She shook her head. She had to stay awake, for all the people she was going to give justice in the future, for all the people she would save in the future, for her team…For Deeks. She needed to stay awake for Deeks. She continued to sing, keeping herself awake.

"_Keep holding on, 'cause you know we'll make it through. We'll make it through. Just stay strong."_

* * *

**AN: I hope the song lyrics thing wasn't too much haha. LeAvE a ReViEw please! (: **


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: I like this chapter, but it's very sad:'( Just bear with me guys(:**

* * *

"I think Vanderbilt still has Kensi somewhere. I think he's going to try to use her to get out of going to prison," Deeks said.

"That doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't know why he wouldn't have said something yet," Callen said.

Deeks shook his head. "It makes perfect sense. He wanted to take me at the park, but he couldn't get me. He had Kensi the whole time, proabably tied up somewhere else, and just chose not to give her up. But now that he doesn't have me and he's facing charges for kidnapping and attempted manslaughter, he'll want to use Kensi to get out of sentencing. I need him out of the hospital and in the boatshed pronto."

Sam and Callen, not used to being ordered around, exchanged a quick glance but complied. Sam made a couple simple calls, and then turned and left.

* * *

"_I wanna KNOW what love is! I want you to SHOW ME!" _Kensi shouted into the freezing air. She laughed a little bit at herself, trying to lighten her own mood. It didn't work well. The only reason she could laugh whatsoever was because she was delirious and she was shouting words out that she could hardly comprehend anymore. Her throat was achingly dry. She shut her mouth and stopped singing; her throat and mouth couldn't handle a lot more.

She was freezing. This was definitely the coldest she'd ever been…obviously. She was fairly sure that this was the coldest anybody in the state of California had ever been. She was freezing to death. It was happening slowly, and she wasn't quite sure how much longer she had, but she knew that she was unusually cold. She was much past the time when simply her fingers were numb. She could only dream of having that time back. Now, she couldn't feel the tips of her hands, she couldn't feel her ears at all, and she couldn't feel much of her nose. Her lips were going numb slowly. Her toes were very, very cold in her boots. She could feel a few of them but certainly not all. This was, quite possibly, the most pain she'd ever been in physically. All the parts of her body that she could feel were tingling, not slightly but very much so. The wounds on her feet were roaring in pain. The wounds on her wrists were also very painful. The feeling of being numb wasn't a good feeling whatsoever. She almost screamed out loud when she looked down at her hands and saw that the tips of her fingers were starting to turn a light grayish color. She knew it was frostbite. She shoved her fingers in her mouth violently, allowing her warm mouth to hopefully increase the temperature in her fingers and keep them from becoming grossly blackened. When she pulled them out, she dried them off on her shirt. She didn't have a mirror, but she was beginning to worry that the tip of her nose was getting frostbitten as well. She made a small tunnel with her hands over her nose and mouth and breathed out into the tunnel several times, warming up her nose enough that it hopefully wouldn't turn gray.

She had cried several times, but the tears were so cold after only a few seconds that it became an actual incentive for her to hold back all her tears.

She was so tired. Her eyelids were so heavy and droopy. She was blinking slowly, starting to fall asleep. It was taking everything in her to stay awake. She allowed her eyes to close for a moment. It felt so good. She wanted to just leave them closed…

"No!" she yelled out loud, forcing her eyes open and jumping up off the floor. She couldn't let herself fall asleep, or else she would go to sleep forever. She had to stay awake. Whenever she stood up and started walking again, she winced from the pain from the wounds on her ankles. The last time she'd started jogging, they had hurt pretty badly at first but had gotten better after a little bit of time on her feet. It was very painful though.

Kensi pushed herself to move around, to keep herself warmer. She couldn't run because of how much it burned to breathe, but she could at least walk. She walked around the freezer, almost unable to feel the floor because of how numb her feet were. Her arms were tingling wildly because she had nothing to cover them up with whatsoever. She pulled them into her shirt several times, but she never kept them there for long; it didn't help that much.

She walked around for a little while, but her ankles were still aching and she wanted nothing more than to sit back down next to the door…so she did. Sitting back down made her butt very cold. She wasn't sure how it was possible to get colder than she already was, but obviously it could be done. She didn't know how much longer she could handle this before she was tempted to give up. She was just so exhausted, and so cold…she was so, _so_ cold.

* * *

"I know you still have her. She never called or showed up," Deeks said, walking into the interrogation room and staring down Vanderbilt. He walked up to the table and grabbed the chair across from his enemy. He turned it around backwards and straddled it, his chest against the back of the chair.

Vanderbilt stared at Deeks blankly for several silent moments, and then spoke. "Somehow, I knew you'd become a cop. I wonder how I knew. Maybe it was the way you saw something wrong in your eyes and ran off and told the police about it, and got me taken away from my parents. Maybe that was it," he said, fuming.

_If looks could kill,_ Deeks thought. "Tell me where my partner is," he said.

Vanderbilt chuckled. "One track mind. How admirable." He glared at Deeks for a minute, and then spoke again. "Do you want to play a game, Marty?"

"No, I want you to tell me-"

"Great, let's play a game. How about a quick game of 'Would You Rather'?" Vanderbilt interrupted. "Would you rather…live with an alcoholic who occasionally broke a lamp, or live with people you don't know and get molested and beaten half of your childhood?"

Deeks squeezed his teeth together with frustration. "How the hell was I supposed to know that would happen to you? How was I even supposed to know they would take you away from your parents? I was thirteen! Did you really expect me to know that they would take you from your parents?" he said, his voice rising.

"It wasn't any of your damned business!" Vanderbilt spat, moving closer to Deeks menacingly.

Deeks shut his mouth and looked to the side. He didn't have time to chat with Vanderbilt about the past. He needed to find Kensi.

"Where is my partner?" he asked.

Vanderbilt leaned forward and looked into Deeks' eyes. "You want to know where your partner is? She's _dead._"

Deeks felt like he was about to choke on his own spit. His chest started pounding, and he started feeling nauseated.

"I tied her to a bed, and I raped her. She screamed, so I put duct tape over her mouth. She started crying. I told her it was your fault she was being raped. I told her she was going to die, so at least she saw it coming," he said, grinning at Deeks, who was now red and fuming. "Then I shoved her into my pool and held her head underwater. She screamed, which was pretty stupid, because she just got rid of even more of her oxygen. She started to realize that fighting me was worthless, so I brought her back up for just a minute. I told her that you were the reason she was dying. Then I pushed her back underwater and watched her struggle. The pain on her face was just…indescribably pleasuring for me. She's quite beautiful, but let me tell you, the drowning look isn't so great on her. She got very pale. The way that you get pale whenever you're _dead_-"

Vanderbilt's mouth snapped shut when Deeks threw the table separating them to the side and grabbed Vanderbilt by the throat. He shoved him up against the wall and squeezed his throat.

"I will _end you_, right here, and right now," he spat, tears burning in the corners of his eyes. Sam and Callen burst into the interrogation room to stop Deeks, but both were slow in the process. They wanted Vanderbilt dead at this moment just as much as Deeks did. But they both knew they couldn't let that happen. They grabbed Deeks and pulled him away, having a tough time. Deeks was almost stronger than both of them at the moment…His adrenaline was responsible for about 60% of his strength.

"Where's her body? Where is she?" he screamed.

"In the bottom of my pool," Vanderbilt replied, flashing a toothy grin as Deeks was forced out of the interrogation room.

Deeks couldn't handle this. Kensi couldn't be dead. The words didn't register well with him. They ran through his mind, but he could hardly comprehend them. They were just a statement, hanging in his mind meaninglessly. He couldn't think past her being gone. He couldn't handle the general idea of never seeing her again. His mind literally shut down whenever he tried to think of her being dead, because the idea was so harsh.

Deeks left the boatshed and headed to the address that Eric had sent him earlier that day when they were chasing after Vanderbilt. When they'd checked earlier that day, neither Kensi nor Vanderbilt was there. Now he had to head back to the house, to see if Kensi's body…Kensi's lifeless body…Kensi's actual dead body…was lying at the bottom of his pool.

Deeks almost couldn't drive adequately slightly because it was now 1:00 in the morning and the streets were very dark, but mostly because of his anger, sadness, and nervousness. He was nervous that he would get to Vanderbilt's body and find Kensi's house. No, he was nervous that he'd get to Vanderbilt's house and find Kensi's body. Damn it, he couldn't even think straight!

* * *

"Deeks, I'm really cold. I know you're probably worried right now. I'm not sure I'd be able to function if I knew that you were in a freezer, freezing to death. But then again, you don't know I'm here, or else you would've come by now. You have no idea where I am, do you? I'm in a damned freezer! At first I just thought it was somewhat funny that I actually got stuck in a freezer, literally. But now nothing is funny. I bet you're not cracking any jokes now, Deeks, huh? Did Vanderbilt get you? I've been hoping that he didn't, I sort of just had this feeling that you were too smart for him. He's not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed. But I'd like to think that you would have found me already if you're free. I guess I'm not sure how though. I haven't figured that out yet. Aren't there witnesses or something? I miss you, Deeks."

These things had been running through Kensi's mind for about an hour, but now she was actually speaking them out loud, simply to help her stay awake. She decided she would talk to Deeks. That would keep her awake. She imagined him sitting beside her, warm and comforting.

"I'm not sure if I'm going to live or die right now. I really don't know what's going to happen. I'd like to have faith that you're going to find me, but I don't know how that would happen. I don't think the odds are really in my favor right now. I think my chances of living are much more slim than my chances of dying. I'm so sleepy. I'm trying to stay awake; that's why I'm talking to you. Do you know what my favorite part of my job is? It's going undercover with you. It's so much fun. I love pretending to be your girlfriend or your wife. Maybe it's because I just like being your girlfriend or wife, all pretending and acting aside. Maybe I would actually like to be your girlfriend. If you could really hear me right now, you'd probably laugh at me. You'd probably say something stupid, like, 'well, that's unfortunate.' I think it was kind of hard _not_ to fall for you, at least somewhat. Like you said, Deeks, you're just heaven 24/7," Kensi said, chuckling a bit, even though she thought it wasn't possible to smile in her current state.

"I would really like to see you again. Even if I die, I hope I get to see you again. I hope you find me before I'm dead, even if I'm _going _to die. I just really want to see you again before I die. I have to tell you that I think I'm in love with you. Maybe. I'm not completely sure of myself, but this is the most sure I've ever been with anybody in my life. I know I've never been this certain that I'm in love, even if I'm really not certain I'm truly in love with you…"

Kensi shut her mouth for a minute, allowing her tongue to moisten again.

"You know, screw it, Deeks. I'm in love with you. I don't think so, I know so. I'm certain. I don't know how long it will last for me, but I know I'm in love with you right now. I _have_ to see you again," she said, standing up again.

"But I don't know if that's going to happen. I'm so cold, Deeks. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how much longer I can hang on. If I live through this, I should definitely write a book. Who else can say that they nearly froze to death? I mean, I'm not sure whether I'm near death right now or not. I don't know how long it takes for someone to freeze to death. I didn't really think I was ever going to need to know that inforcmation, it wasn't on my list of things to search on Google. I'm really cold. I'm so pissed off at myself. I can't help it. If you were here, you would tell me not to blame myself. You would say that I couldn't have known the door would jam, you would say that I never knew I was stepping into a freezer in the first place and there was no way it was my fault. But it is. You see the best in me, Deeks, but this really is my fault. There's no way of skipping around it. I walked into a freezer and slammed the door as hard as I possibly could. Could I have been any more stupid? What did I think it was? How did I not know I was walking into a freezer in the first place? What other kind of private rooms are there in the back of restaurants? There are none! There are fridges and freezers! I wish I could have at least walked a bit further and ended up in the fridge. Then I could at least be guaranteed that I wouldn't die. If I was in a fridge, I could have waited until tomorrow when the restaurant opens back up and the workers found me. But I'm not. I'm in the freezer. And I can't last ten more hours, Deeks. I used to have hope that I could just wait for the workers to find me, but now that it's been three hours and I already feel like I'm going to die soon, I know there's no way I could live until tomorrow afternoon. I'm not sure it's impossible, but I think I would have to be a bit fatter for that to work. If you were here, you would crack a joke about how conceited that sounded. Either that or you would make some sort of twisted compliment about my body. I'm really ready to hear your jokes again, Deeks. Please find me. This is really frustrating," Kensi said, snapping her mouth shut, not having much more to say. This little rant was keeping her awake, but she wasn't sure what else she had to say. She'd said it all.

* * *

When Deeks got to Vanderbilt's house, he jumped out of his car, not bothering to close the door. He sprinted up to the side gate and kicked it in, even though it was unlocked. He stepped over the broken wooden gate and into Vanderbilt's yard. There wasn't much of a yard, though. When Deeks stepped into the yard, he immediately saw the rather small in-ground pool in front of him. Kensi wasn't there. It took him all of two seconds to realize that; a body wasn't something difficult to spot.

Deeks' heart rose when he realized that if Vanderbilt was lying about where Kensi's body was, he could very well be lying about her being dead.

Deeks walked into Vanderbilt's house and inspected every room, making sure Kensi wasn't there. He was extremely relieved when he found that she wasn't, but his relief could only go so far. Vanderbilt could still have been telling the truth about raping and killing Kensi, and put the body somewhere else. Kensi was still gone, and there was still no sign of her. There were no leads, or any ideas as to where she could be. Deeks was getting to be hopeless.

Kensi couldn't keep herself from crying now, even though she knew it was just going to make her cheeks colder. This was one of the worst deaths she could imagine, and with her job, she'd seen plenty of painful deaths. This pain was indescribable. This tingling feeling was beginning to feel like burns. She felt hundreds of little burns tingling all over her body. It was like when you go ice skating and you fall on the ice; your hands are cold for the short amount of time that they're actually resting on the ice, but when you take them off just moments later, your hands are burning insanely and just feel oddly hot yet cold at the same time. It was an unusual feeling that wasn't just hot or just cold, but it was simply painful. It was just pain, whether it was hot or it was cold, it was pain. It was excruciating pain.

She couldn't take this much longer. She was getting angry at this freezer. She was angry that there was no way for her to get out. Freezers weren't supposed to be this accident-prone. Freezers weren't supposed to have doors that jammed. Freezer doors were supposed to be solidly working, no matter how hard you slammed them closed. Walk-in freezers weren't supposed to do this, because it was just a matter of time before someone got stuck inside, and froze to death. Freezers were very dangerous, when the doors jam. This wasn't fair.

Tears streaming down her face, Kensi pounded on the door. She took out her anger on it. She threw her fist into the door, causing her knuckles to scrape and bleed. She didn't care. She kicked the door angrily.

"This is so ridiculous! This is just stupid!" she screamed.

She continued pounding on the door with her fists that she could very nearly not feel.

"I…am freezing to death!" she screamed. She spit on the door angrily.

Pretty soon, she had taken out all of her anger on the door, and her body was even weaker than it had been before. She wiped her eyes and sat down on the freezer floor in a different spot than usual. She sat on the back wall of the freezer, leaning her head against a shelf stocked full of frozen foods. She panted for a minute, and then her breathing calmed down and she began to feel tired again. This time, she was more tired than she had been before. Her body was weak from punching the door pointlessly. She was more than tired this time; she was more than exhausted or delirious. She was tired nearly beyond the point of her control. Her eyes started blinking, the tears in them drying up finally. Her head lying against the shelf, Kensi felt comfortable. She was in excruciating pain still, yes, but she was sitting in a good position…the kind of position that made her even more vulnerable to sleeping. She tried to force her eyes to stay open, but they were just getting heavier and heavier. She blinked several times, very slowly, and finally her eyes closed. She tried to force them to reopen, but they were fed up. Her eyes weren't listening to her brain…and now, her brain wasn't listening to her heart. She was going to sleep…forever. This was it. This was death. This was what death felt like. She couldn't feel her body anymore. Her actual death was going to be peaceful. Her body was no longer connected to her mind because of her extreme exhaustion, and she was not in pain. She was simply going to sleep, and never going to wake up again.

Finally, her conscience faded out, and she was gone.

* * *

**AN: Don't freak out or lose hope, you know that everything will work out okay(: Thanks for all the favorites btw! (: I never feel encouraged to update soon if nobody leaves a review or seems to care, so if you like this, tell me!**


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: So I wrote this chapter a couple days ago and just haven't gotten around to editing and proofreading yet...I've been desperately trying to write chapter 6, but I'm struggling big time/: I feel like I don't know the characters well. Plus school is starting soon & I don't have much time! Idk though, I'll try to publish it tomorrow if I can. I'll write all night tonight if I can steal one of my dad's stay awake pills ahhahahhahhha.**

* * *

"Kensi isn't here. I looked all over the house. She's not here. She might not even be dead," Deeks said through the phone to Callen. He didn't wait for a response, he just hung up and continued driving as quickly as possible, going slightly faster than the speed limit, to get back to the boatshed. He needed to talk to Vanderbilt again. Although Deeks knew Vanderbilt could, and likely would, lie to him again, he didn't have any other way of finding Kensi. Vanderbilt was the only way. He had to get Vanderbilt to tell him the truth, everything he knew.

When he got to the boatshed, Deeks headed into the interrogation room immediately. Vanderbilt was still sitting in there; Deeks had told Callen and Sam to leave him there.

He walked through the door quietly, rather than bursting in and creating an angry atmosphere. He needed Vanderbilt, even though he didn't want to admit it. He wasn't sure if Vanderbilt was keeping her somewhere, or if he just knew something about her disappearance, but he definitely knew more than Deeks knew.

Deeks sat down across from Vanderbilt with ease. Vanderbilt stared at him, rubbing his facial stubble with his thumbs.

"I know you lied about killing Kensi," Deeks said.

Vanderbilt didn't look shocked. He had known that Deeks would find out soon enough.

"You just said that to rattle me up, huh?" Deeks asked. "It worked. I think a piece of me died when you told me that."

He didn't say anything.

"Please tell me where she is, or what you know. I need the truth," Deeks said.

"I _hate_ you. What makes you think I would give you the truth?" Vanderbilt questioned.

Deeks stared at him. "Listen to me, Percy. I know I wronged you in the past. I know it was none of my business, and I ruined your childhood. But let me ask you a question."

Vanderbilt stared at him expectantly.

"Do you know my partner? Have you ever had a conversation with her?"

Vanderbilt stayed silent for a moment, but then answered, "No."

"She's not like me. She doesn't ruin people's lives like you seem to think I do. It was a misunderstanding. It wasn't my business, but I'm not at fault for all that you went through…the people who did it to you are at fault. I know that all of it had to mess you up, but I need you to realize that the person you're hurting is Kensi. Kensi is innocent. You don't even know her. She's never done anything to you. I need you to tell me the truth," Deeks said, hoping he was getting through to him.

Vanderbilt just stared at Deeks for a very long, awkward moment, and finally Deeks could see the resignation in his eyes.

"All right, listen. I wasn't lying when I said she escaped. She really did escape. I was shocked when you said you hadn't heard from her. I don't know where she went. I chased her into an alley, and into the back door of a restaurant. It was called 'Mimi's.' I got in the restaurant soon after her, but she was gone. I don't know where she could have gone. I checked everywhere around the restaurant after I lost her, and she was nowhere. I have no idea where she went after that."

"Thank you," Deeks said, hopping up from the chair immediately and running out of the boatshed, taking off to the bullpen.

When he got to the bullpen, he ran inside as quickly as he'd ever run before. He sprinted upstairs to the loft, out of breath by the time he got there, and walked up to Eric. Sam and Callen surrounded him on either side, and Hetty stood behind them all, knowing he had something to say.

"I was talking to Vanderbilt. I don't think he's lying this time. Kensi did escape. He chased her into a restaurant by his house called 'Mimi's.' After she went inside, he didn't see her again. Eric, can you pull up the street camera's bird-eye of the restaurant? Take it from four and a half hours ago…9:00."

Eric's fingers flew across the keyboard at a jittery and nervous pace, and the video was eventually pulled up onto the big screen in front of Deeks, Callen, and Sam. They all watched as Kensi ran into sight of the back of the restaurant, and then went into the restaurant through the back door. They watched Vanderbilt go in after her, and neither came out for several minutes. Then Vanderbilt left through the front door, without Kensi. The team watched for a few minutes and saw no change; Kensi was still in the restaurant.

"Fast forward it, see if she ever came out," Sam said.

Eric fast forwarded the tape and the team watched it in fast motion. She never came out.

"Kensi never left the restaurant. What could keep her in there?" Deeks questioned.

"I have no idea…" Sam said.

"She could have had a heart attack. Or she could have slipped and fell and hit her head," Callen suggested.

"Slip and fall? That's not something Kensi does. Even if she fell, she would have been conscious by now. And it wouldn't make sense for her to have a heart attack. She's young, healthy, and fit. People like her don't have heart attacks-"

"Guys…" Eric said.

All three men looked to Eric, knowing he had an idea of what happened by the tone of his voice.

"Try to picture this: Kensi runs down an alley, trying to get away from Vanderbilt. She runs into the restaurant, knowing he's following her. It's late at night, and the restaurant is closed. She can't see anything. She's trying desperately to find somewhere to hide from her captor, so she runs into the first room she can find…"

Deeks stares at Eric, waiting for him to finish.

"The fridge…or worse, the freezer."

Deeks' face dropped like a basset hound, his eyes widening when he realized that Eric had to be right. There was nothing else that could have happened to her. Immediately, Deeks started jogging out of the building down to his car, with Sam and Callen following. When they got in the car, Deeks turned to Sam.

"Call a fire truck. I'm not sure what other service can beat down the door to a walk-in freezer."

Sam nodded and made the call.

Deeks felt like he was going to be sick when he realized that Kensi had been stuck in a freezer for the past four and a half hours. He hoped desperately that she was in the fridge rather than the freezer. He couldn't stand the thought of Kensi sitting alone in a freezer, actually freezing to death. He wanted it to be another lie. He wanted it to be a lie, just like her death by drowning had been a lie. But he knew it wasn't. He'd seen the street tapes, and there was no other plausible explanation that Kensi could be staying in a restaurant.

When they got to the café, Deeks had no more than ran into the building before he heard the ambulance and fire truck pulling up to the scene. He flipped on the lights to the restaurant and ran to the back, with Sam and Callen following. He saw two large, steel, walk-in coolers and grabbed the handle to the first one. He pulled on it and it opened with ease. He walked in shakily, and Kensi wasn't anywhere to be found. This was the fridge…it definitely wasn't cool enough to be a freezer…Which meant that Kensi was, in fact, stuck in a freezer; not a fridge. He darted out of the fridge and turned the handle on the next steel structure, and yanked, but it didn't open. The door was jammed, and Kensi was inside.

"Sir, I need you to step aside," said a firefighter/emergency worker.

Deeks stepped to the side, knowing he couldn't do better than the firefighter. He watched as the man, not in uniform since he wasn't actually fighting fire, used a large steel tool to pull the hinges off of the door. He pulled off the top one first, and then the bottom. Once both hinges were off, the door immediately fell down. Deeks was the first one inside the freezer. It was…so cold. It was so, _so_ cold. He saw Kensi immediately. He ran to the back of the freezer, where her white-as-chalk, limp, bruised, frostbitten, wounded body was lying against a shelf of food. The sight brought tears to his eyes, and he struggled not to let them fall. He grabbed her, one hand under her knees and the other under her neck, Cinderella-style, and picked her up off the floor. Deeks realized that his teeth were chattering just after having been in there for a minute or two, with the door wide open and warm air getting inside. He couldn't imagine how cold it had been for Kensi, who had sat in there for four and a half hours with the door closed and no warm air getting in.

"Kensi! Kensi, open your eyes," he said, patting her cheek. He felt for a pulse, and shuddered when there wasn't one. Kensi was…_dead_. She was really dead. She had no pulse, no heartbeat…She was dead.

"She…there's no pulse…She's…not…" Deeks shut his mouth, unable to say what he knew was true. He shouldn't have expected her to be alive. He should have known the second he'd picked her up that she was gone. Her skin was as cold as a coke can you dug out of an ice chest.

Deeks' tears were now surrounding his eyes, not flowing down his cheeks, but simply surrounding his eyes, giving him a strange look. He couldn't be crying. He never cried.

But this was different. Kensi was _dead_. This wasn't something Deeks could handle, or wrap his mind around.

"Hand her to me," an emergency medical technician (EMT) said.

"Why? She's…dead," Deeks said, finally saying it out loud. Saying it out loud made it feel so much more real.

"She's not dead until she has a normal body temperature and her heart isn't beating. As long as she's frozen, she could still be revived," the man said. He walked up to Deeks and took Kensi from him aggressively, needing to do his job as quickly as possible.

"Wait, what?" Deeks questioned, confused. Hope immediately rose up in him when the man spoke about the possibility of reviving Kensi. He followed the EMT outside of the restaurant to the ambulance, with Sam and Callen right beside him, not speaking much other than to each other but listening to everything that everybody was saying.

"First we have to get her body temperature back up to normal. Then we try to get a heartbeat. If we can't get one within an hour after her temperature being at an average 98 degrees Fahrenheit, then she's pronounced dead. But if we can get a heartbeat, there's a chance she could make it…However, she could be in a coma. There's no telling whether or not she will ever return to how she was before being stuck in the freezer. I don't want to get your hopes up; the chances that she is revived at all are very slim. Possible, but slim. Try to remain positive, but you have to remember that it very well may not work," the EMT said.

The whole time the middle-aged man was talking, he was giving her CPR, trying to get oxygen to her brain cells. Then he wrapped Kensi up in several blankets, attempting to get her temperature back up. By the time he had finished talking, he had put the stretcher with her body on it in the back of the ambulance. Deeks climbed in the back of the ambulance with the EMT, while Sam and Callen followed in a car behind them.

"What's her temperature?" Deeks questioned, staring at Kensi's dead body and getting sick to his stomach once again.

"77 so far. It was probably about 70 when we found her. That's extremely low. Anyone with a temperature below 82 degrees Fahrenheit has a 10-33% chance of revival," The EMT said, doing CPR and mouth-to-mouth once again.

Deeks shook his head. He wasn't sure he would ever be able to cope again if Kensi died like this. He was literally staring at her dead body. She was dead. There was a chance of resuscitation, but it was very slim.

"Please do everything you can. I don't think you understand…I'm in love with her. And I never told her."

The EMT didn't even look up. "It's pretty obvious. Why didn't you tell her?" he asked, pushing down on her chest again and again.

"We work together. We're not really allowed to be in love. And even if we were…I don't know. I'm typically not a very serious person…Until something like this happens and wakes me up," he said, looking down at Kensi, his eyebrows drawn together with concern. His mouth was dragging downwards at the edges, he couldn't get the frown off of his face.

"I'll make sure we do everything we can," the EMT replied, not looking up at Deeks. He was very professional, or perhaps just extremely stressed, which was understandable considering he was attempting to unfreeze and revive a human being.

The arrival at the hospital was hectic. Deeks was shoved out of the way as Kensi's stretcher was wheeled into a hospital room, with many, _many_ doctors following it. This was a big deal…This wasn't the typical everyday medical emergency. Kensi was frozen and dead. Literally.

Deeks tried to follow into the hospital room, but was kicked out. He'd expected no less. He was escorted to the waiting room, where he found Sam, Callen, and Hetty. Hetty was filling out medical papers. He sat down next to her and cradled his head in his hands. He had hope that Kensi would live, but the statistics were beating him down, worrying him to the point that he felt like he almost couldn't breathe. He had never realized how much Kensi mattered to him until this happened. If it had been Sam or Callen, Deeks still would have shed tears and been extremely upset…but this was past the point of upset. This was incomprehensible. He couldn't tolerate the idea of Kensi being dead. He couldn't tolerate the images that came to his mind when he thought of Kensi, sitting alone in a freezer, teeth chattering, body going numb, and slowly freezing to death. He couldn't tolerate the amount of pain that wandered into his imagination when he considered what she must have felt like. He had been in the freezer for a few minutes when he went to get her. It was so cold. There was no way to get away from it. He imagined the terror Kensi must have felt when she pulled on the freezer door and it wouldn't open.

"Deeks!" Callen finally shouted, ripping Deeks from his thoughts.

His head snapped up and he stared blankly at Callen.

"What did the EMT say?" he asked.

Deeks opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. Then he reopened it and spoke. "He said the same thing he said at the scene. She has a slim chance of revival once they get her body temperature up. The last I heard, her temperature was at 77. The EMT said that it was probably about 70 when we found her," Deeks said.

"The time between the second we found her and the second I asked the EMT about her temperature was about 10 minutes. So her temperature went up 7 degrees in 8 minutes, meaning it should take about…no more than 20 minutes or so, unless the rate of increase changes," Callen said.

Deeks nodded. "Something tells me the rate of increase will change," he said bitterly.

Sam and Callen stared at him silently, while Hetty watched him closely and interpreted his emotions from the look on his face. She knew that he cared more than he should.

Hetty disappeared for a few minutes at one point to turn in the medical papers for Kensi, and then reappeared and sat down again, not saying a word. Nobody said a word.

The wait for news was a long wait. It was a painful wait. It seemed like it took several hours, when it actually took thirty minutes. When the doctor appeared in the waiting room, all eyes snapped over to him immediately.

"Miss Blye's temperature is back to normal. We are now trying to get a heartbeat and make her brain respond. Please remember that her temperature being back to normal makes no difference on whether or not she makes it; she could be destined to die and not have any shot at living and her body temperature would still be back to normal," the doctor said. Then he disappeared immediately.

"Why are these doctors such pessimists?" Sam questioned aloud, slamming his back into the back of his chair.

"They're doctors. They're just being realistic," Callen said, glancing over at Sam.

Sam and Callen were taking Kensi's death…well, half death…very badly as well, but not like Deeks was. Sam and Callen were upset and both had red, exhausted eyes and bitter frowns splattered across their faces, but neither of them were actually _disturbed_, like Deeks.

Sam fell asleep in his waiting chair, and then Hetty followed. Callen stayed awake for quite some time, but he also fell asleep eventually. Deeks didn't go to sleep. He found it impossible. He just kept thinking about that freezer. Just the thought of it made him shiver violently.

When Deeks felt he was going crazy waiting for results, he stood up to take a break from the environment he'd been in for the past hour. He walked down the hall to a bathroom and took care of business, and then splashed water onto his face, trying to wake himself up and get him out of his thoughts of the freezer. The cold water just made him think of the cold, though, and of how cold the freezer was. It was all he could think about. He knew that if Kensi was okay and if Kensi possibly lived, which wasn't looking so hopeful, he would be able to eventually forget about it. But for now, that freezer was stuck in his mind, as well as Kensi's frozen, dead face. She hadn't even looked like herself. She had looked like someone different. She was strangely pale, and she had no make up on. Deeks had seen her without make up before and she'd looked beautiful still, almost the same as she looked with make up. But when he'd seen her in the freezer, her face was so pale that it didn't look like her. Kensi was bronze and her face was always tan. Her lips had been purple when Deeks found her. They had been purple as in indigo…Blue-ish purple. It was a horrible sight.

Deeks splashed more water onto his face, opening his eyes and looking at himself in the mirror, trying to get Kensi's face out of his mind. Then he left the bathroom, and walked back to the waiting room. Not much had changed, so he just sat down and prepared to wait again.

Luckily, he didn't have to wait long. The doctor appeared in the room just a few minutes later, and Deeks walked up to him eagerly.

"I have something to tell you."

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**AN: you know what i want haha. **


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: I struggled so much with this chapter, just because I don't want to let anybody down! :( But hopefully you guys like it! It's super duper long, it's about 5,000 words! So that much is good! (:**

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"What is it? Is she alive?" Deeks asked the doctor, staring at him, his eyes pleading for an answer.

The doctor stared at him for a short moment. "To answer your question, yes, we revived her."

Deeks almost jumped into the air. Kensi was not dead. Kensi was not the person he had found in the freezer earlier that day.

"_But_-" the doctor started, "There is no way of knowing whether or not she will actually regain consciousness. I'd like to say that it's likely that she will, because she is showing a good amount of brain activity, but I don't know how long it could be. But she could very well wake up any minute now. Most of the time, if people survive being frozen to death, they wake up fairly quickly, depending on how long they were dead."

Deeks nodded. He almost wanted to hug the doctor. "Thank you so much. I can't believe she made it…She was so dead…"

The doctor nodded. "She was extremely lucky. Very few people who are frozen to death ever live. Of course, there isn't necessarily a large amount of cases of people who freeze to death, but there was a particular accident several years back when a boat sunk in freezing cold water, and about half of the people froze to death. It obviously wasn't at this hospital, since year-round there isn't any water cold enough around here for people to freeze to death. But it took place at my friend from med school's hospital. Anyway, out of the 25 people or so, only 3 of them lived. That's how lucky Ms. Blye was."

Although this somewhat interested Deeks, he really didn't want to hear much more about it. This doctor was a bit too friendly rather than serious. Deeks just wanted to see Kensi. "Can we visit her?"

"One at a time," the doctor told Deeks.

Deeks nodded and headed back to the team. He couldn't believe Kensi was alive. Kensi was really alive. She wasn't dead. Deeks had held onto a small piece of hope that she would make it through this, but with the statistics he was hearing left and right and Kensi's very dead face popping into his vision every five seconds, it was very difficult to have much hope that she would be okay. Hearing that Kensi had a beating heart snapped him back into reality. He felt like he had been somewhat asleep, in a certain type of daze, and wandering around the hospital had been some sort of nightmare that was very surreal. It was a nightmare, and as he had waited for the doctor to give him some sort of news on how Kensi was doing, he knew that waking up was going to be inevitable…the question had simply been whether he would be happy to wake up or sad.

Deeks shut down his mind for a moment while he went to awaken the rest of the team. He woke up Callen first, then Sam, and then Hetty and gave them the news.

"You can visit first," Sam said, stretching and grinning. Just a few minutes ago, he'd felt physically incapable of grinning. Now he was grinning widely, knowing that Kensi was alive.

Deeks left the waiting room and rushed into Kensi's hospital room. When he got inside, he noticed that Kensi was regaining color in her face. It was so relieving. She was still much paler than usual, but she wasn't dead. She was very much alive. Deeks saw that the tips of her fingers were gray from frostbite, but her nose was now healed. When he'd found her, her nose had frostbite as well. The whole tip of her nose was white. Not gray, but white; it wasn't as severe as the frostbite on her fingers.

He grabbed the chair on the right side of her bed and pulled it closer to her, and then he sat down in it. He pushed a few buttons and collapsed the railing to her bed so he could easily reach her.

"Hey, Kensi. It's really good to see color in your face. It's good to see you breathing. It's good just to see you at all. I had no idea where you could have been. I'm sorry about Vanderbilt. He's my enemy, and he's the reason you got taken in the middle of the night, and beaten until you got a bloody nose, and the reason you ran into the freezer and slammed the door behind you. He's the reason for all of it, and I'm the reason for him. I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner," Deeks said, grabbing Kensi's thankfully warm hand. He was quiet for a minute, examining her. "You know, these people really aren't treating you right. First, they tell me you're most likely dead forever, even though you lived. And then, they never even gave you any green jello! The least they could have done was some cheap red jello. I guess they're not sure when you'll wake up so they don't want to waste it. But it's like 99 cents a package, right? Such cheap people. They said you may not wake up, you may be in a permanent coma. I don't believe them though. Not for a second. I really want you to wake up, Kensi. You came back from the dead…I'm thinking you can come out of the coma now-" Deeks stopped mid-sentence whenever Kensi's hand, entangled in his, moved. Her hand moved slightly to the left, and she slid her fingers between his gently. Deeks let out a shocked and relieved breath, and then grinned and squeezed her hand.

"Kensi?" he asked, getting hopeful and scooting even closer to her. She was waking up. She had to be. He hadn't imagined her moving her hand. He also didn't imagine it when Kensi's eyelids started fluttering and eventually opened up slowly, revealing a set of confused mismatched eyes. He loved her eyes. He felt like his heart stopped whenever she opened her eyes. She was awake. The worries were over. She was going to be okay. He was going to be able to talk to her again and actually get a response. He wanted to throw a party.

She took a minute to adjust to the light. When her eyes were finally all the way opened, she looked over at Deeks. She didn't say anything, and Deeks assumed it was because her throat was dry, because she turned her head towards the hospital's night stand and grabbed one of her two water bottles. She opened it shakily and Deeks could almost see her gaining strength with every ounce that she drank. When she finished, her hand was no longer shaking, and she coughed a few times. She put the water bottle back on the nightstand and turned back to Deeks, pulling her covers higher onto her chest.

"I never want to be cold again."

He chuckled a little at the first words out of her mouth, and then stood up and leaned over her bed, and pulled her in for a hug. He wanted her in his arms, he wanted to feel her breathing against him. He held her there until she pulled back.

Kensi noticed his strangely large amount of fondness towards her and stared up at him whenever he pulled back.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He looked at her for a minute. "Not really. But it's helping a lot to see you alive and functioning," he admitted.

She looked away from him for a minute, still waking herself all the way up. She pushed her hair out of her face and sat up.

"How much do you remember?" Deeks asked, looking at her.

"About which part? The part where your high school sweetheart kidnapped me, or the part where I got stuck in a freezer, or the part where I froze to death?" she asked.

"Good to know there isn't any memory loss," he said.

Deeks wasn't smiling or laughing, and Kensi noticed this.

"What's your deal, Deeks? I'm awake and I'm fine, and you still look worried to death," she said.

He stared at her for a long moment, trying to find the words to say to her.

Kensi's facial expression got serious again. Why wasn't Deeks cracking jokes or laughing at her? Why was he just sitting there all seriously?

"Is something else wrong? Is there something you have to tell me? Did somebody die?" she asked, looking at him in confusion.

"Other than you, no," he said, chuckling a little.

Kensi saw that he was trying to lighten the mood and be himself, but she knew he was still not all there.

"I'm just…trying to get over the way I was feeling when I found out you were dead. I'm trying to forget about it now that you're okay, but I still feel, um…guilty."

Kensi, who had been inspecting her fingers, which were now beginning to turn back to their normal color, immediately turned her head to Deeks' direction.

"Deeks…I'm fine," Kensi said, shaking her head at him. "None of this is your fault. You have to believe that, because it would make me feel pretty shitty if someone froze to death because of me too, but it's _not_ because of you. I really don't want you to feel that way."

Deeks nodded, although he still felt like it was partially his fault.

After a minute of silence, Deeks stood up.

"I'm going to leave now…The others probably want to drop in too, and we're only allowed in here one at a time. I'll come back later?" He suggested.

"Just tell the doctor I want everybody in here, you guys don't need to take turns," she said, smiling slightly with amusement.

"Okay. I'll go get them," he said. He turned around and looked at her as he left. "I'm really glad you're not dead," he said, before shutting the door behind him.

Kensi chuckled a little and grabbed the other bottle of water that was sitting on her nightstand. She drank the entire thing without putting it down once; she was dehydrated.

Back in the waiting room, Deeks approached his team, as well as the doctor, who was sitting with them. He smiled when he walked into the room, and everyone stared at him expectantly.

"Kensi just woke up," he said.

Sam let out a breath that turned into somewhat of a chuckle. Callen smiled a real smile, the type of smile that Deeks hardly ever saw from him. Hetty stood up and started walking away from the waiting room.

"Kensi said she didn't mind if we all went in," Deeks said to the doctor. The doctor nodded reluctantly, knowing it wasn't going to hurt anything, even if he technically wasn't supposed to let so many people into a hospital room.

Sam and Callen, followed by Deeks, started towards Kensi's hospital room, behind Hetty. Hetty went inside first, and then the other three of them piled in.

"Don't you guys have a job to do or something?" Kensi asked, flashing them a signature smile.

Everyone quickly got into a much happier mood whenever they realized that Kensi was clearly the same as she'd been before her kidnapping and death.

"So. Were you chillin' with Jesus?" Deeks asked.

All eyes were suddenly on him. He shut his mouth awkwardly, the way he always did when he said something that he found humorous and the rest of the team found it stupid.

"Okay…guess not…So how was the freezer? Pretty chill?" he said, in an attempt at humor once again.

Again, Deeks just received awkward stares from everyone in the room.

"Why do you guys make everything so awkward?" he questioned aloud.

Kensi tried to find the humor in Deeks' jokes, but every time someone mentioned 'freezer,' she shivered and pulled her hospital blanket closer to her. She still didn't feel warm. She finally forced herself to grin at him, making things a bit less tense.

"The freezer was pretty chill at first. Then it got boring. Then it got…bad," she said, looking at all of her colleagues and friends.

"Glad you're okay, Kens," Sam said.

Callen nodded. "Are you hungry? I wouldn't think there'd be much food that was edible in the freezer, however ironic that is."

"Yeah, I'm starving out of my mind. I stole a box of granola bars from Vanderbilt when I escaped, but that's about it…" Kensi said.

"I'll go get you something. How about some green jello?" Deeks asked, winking.

Kensi chuckled and watched as Deeks left the room.

"If it's okay with you, I'm going to leave when he gets back," Callen said.

Kensi nodded. "Yeah, of course. You guys can go ahead and leave if you want. There's no reason for you to be here, I'm fine," she said.

Sam and Callen exchanged a look and then headed towards the door. Sam stopped in his tracks and turned to face Callen.

"We took Deeks' car to the scene. We don't have a car," he said.

Hetty stood up. "I'll drive you both back to the OSP and you can get your cars," she said. She started walking towards the door with them, willing to leave with them if they were ready.

"Do _not_ come back to work tomorrow. Don't come back for a couple days. And feel better, Miss Blye," Hetty said.

Kensi nodded, giving her a small smile.

"All right. Bye, Kens. Call if you need anything you can't trust in the hands of a man with the maturity of a 15-year-old," Callen said, making fun of Deeks.

Kensi chuckled. "Bye."

Hetty stayed in the room with her up until Deeks was back, and then she left, murmuring a soft goodbye before she closed the door.

Deeks walked in with a bag of food and looked around the empty room.

"Wow. They all ditched you. Except for me. Now you see who's the keeper?" he asked, sitting down at her bedside.

Kensi grinned. "They're probably going to let me out of here soon. You can go too. Just don't take my food with you," she said jokingly.

"I don't want to go," Deeks answered simply, pulling a burger out of the bag and handing it to her, along with some fries shortly after.

"Has anyone found out what happened to the freezer door?" Kensi asked. "I don't understand what happened to it. I mean, I tried everything to get out. Something was wrong between the side of the door and the door frame. I think I would have been able to get out if I could've gotten one of the hinges off, but that's difficult to do when you can't feel your fingers," she said bitterly.

Deeks looked at her sympathetically, not pleased to hear about her frozen fingers. "Yeah, we called to find out what was going on with it. They said that there was just a peg in the door that was holding it shut, and it was supposed to go back whenever you twisted the handle, but somehow the handle got disconnected from the peg so it wouldn't pull back."

Kensi was quiet for a minute. "Was it possible to get it fixed? Could I have fixed it myself if I had tried harder?" she asked.

Deeks shook his head. "There was nothing you could have done to fix the peg. You're right; your best bet of getting out of there was the hinges."

She nodded, sucking in a breath. It felt good to know that she hadn't given up and gone to sleep when there was a way for her to get out.

"There's another thing…" Deeks started.

Kensi stared at him, waiting.

"We contacted the restaurant owner. He told us that…there was a camera in the freezer."

Kensi sat up straighter. "I don't understand. Wouldn't it freeze?"

"Not if you buy the right kind and put it in the right spot."

"I still don't understand. Why the hell would someone put a security camera in the freezer of a restaurant?" she asked.

"The owner had some really pricy filet mignons back there. He didn't want them getting stolen," Deeks answered.

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Are you serious?" she asked.

He grinned. "No. I mean, that's a benefit of having one back there, but that's not why they bought the camera. A few years ago, one of the restaurant's employees took a girl into the fridge and raped her. From what the owner said, it wasn't really rape, but when the girl's parents found out, they were furious, so the girl said she was raped to avoid facing her parents and telling them she consensually had sex. It was just easier to cry rape. Poor guy. I mean, who would actually rape a girl in the fridge of a restaurant during work hours? It was definitely consensual, but that's not what the girl said. The whole case blew up and was all over the news. The employee wasn't charged, but it definitely screwed up his life. When the police first found out about the case, they recommended the restaurant's owner have cameras put in every room of the restaurant. The owner didn't really do it for the police though; he did it for the public. Whenever news got out that a girl was raped in the fridge, it messed up the restaurant's business. So the owner got cameras put in to assure the public that they would be safe," Deeks finished.

Kensi shook her head. "That's stupid."

Deeks looked at her. "He's going to give us the video from last night on a DVD."

She stared at him, her face slowly contorting into an expression of anger. "Why the hell would I want my death on video?" she spat.

He looked down at his hands in his lap. "I didn't mean he was going to give it to us to watch…I just meant he would give it to us so nobody else ever got to see it."

Kensi processed this for a minute and then nodded. "Oh. I'm sorry."

Deeks shook his head. "It's fine. I'd be pissed too," he said.

After a minute of silence, Kensi looked back at Deeks. "Um…Deeks, I'm probably going to be able to leave the hospital whenever we get the doctor back in here, but I'm…not really looking forward to going back to my house and cleaning up a crime scene-"

"If you wanted to sleepover, you could have just said so," Deeks joked, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

Kensi smiled in that way she always smiled when Deeks joked around with her, and then she laid back down in her bed.

"Deeks…I-I still can't feel two of my fingers on my left hand," she informed him, seemingly noticing this for the first time.

His face dropped and the amusement left his eyes. "Which ones?"

"My pinky and fourth finger," she said, her mouth forming into a straight line across her face. She began inspecting her fingers. Her whole right hand was healing fine; the tips of her fingers were no longer gray, and she just had some pink blotchy areas. Most of her left hand was like that too, aside from her pinky and fourth finger. Both of those fingers were still somewhat gray and she had no feeling in the tips of them.

"I don't know what made me think that I could just freeze to death and have no problems when I woke up…I mean, aside from the emotional stuff and everything…" she said, still looking at her fingers, not talking to Deeks, but to herself.

Deeks cleared his throat. "Emotional stuff?"

Kensi didn't answer him or look up from her fingers. Suddenly she pushed the heavy thermal blankets off of her and stood up. She walked towards the door. She started shivering.

"Kensi, don't go outside yet. You're in a hospital gown."

"I know that," she said.

"The kind without a back," Deeks said, staring at her back. The only thing not revealed was her butt, which was covered by her underwear. Deeks tried not to look. His attempts were unsuccessful. "I didn't have you pegged as the lace type," he said.

Kensi, obviously unaware that her hospital gown didn't have a back, turned red in the face. She turned around and walked back to her bed. She sat down, covering back up since she was freezing just from being out from under the covers for a few seconds. She glared at him. "Fine then. You go get the doctor," she ordered.

Deeks chuckled a little but got up and left her room. A few minutes later, he reappeared with Kensi's doctor.

"How are you feeling, Miss Blye?" he murmured once he got inside.

"I'm fine. Thanks for saving my life. Can I leave now?" she asked, getting straight to the point.

Deeks turned to the doctor. "What she means is that she still can't feel two of her fingers and she shivers whenever she gets out from under the covers."

The doctor gave Deeks a small smile, trying to hide his amusement from Kensi.

"Let me see your hand," he said.

Kensi reluctantly gave him her left hand, and he held it close to his face, inspecting it. He looked like some kind of animal who'd never seen a hand before and was fascinated.

"I'm assuming you still can't feel your pinky and ring finger?" he questioned.

"Yeah. The ones that are still gray."

"These are areas of third degree frostbite. I have some bad news," he said, still looking at the skin on her fingers.

Kensi stared up at him attentively. "What?"

"Your fingers should appear to be normal in a month at the most-"

"You mean my fingers are going to be gray for a month? That's horrible news," Kensi interrupted.

"I said at the most. And that's not the bad part. You're lucky that your fingers will look normal in a month. The bad news is that you may have permanent insensitivity to heat or cold in these fingers," the doctor said.

Kensi stared at him. "Permanent?" She hated that word. If Satan had a favorite word, permanent was it.

"Yes. Your fingers were frozen for so long that some of your nerves were damaged and you could be unable to ever feel heat or cold permanently."

Kensi wanted to scream at him, "STOP USING THE WORD PERMANENT." She pictured herself saying it several times, helping her to release her anger a bit without offending the doctor. She pictured herself standing up on her bed, grabbing the shade off of the lamp next to her, and throwing it in the doctor's face.

She finally spoke; not what she wanted to say, but what she was able to say. "That's not…ideal. But I can deal with that. I don't have to feel heat and cold. That could be a good thing…I'll never burn those fingers cooking ever again. I'll be able to at least have feeling in my fingers again eventually though, right?" she asked eagerly.

The doctor was silent for a moment. "Unfortunately, maybe not. It's much more likely that you will regain feeling but have insensitivity to heat and cold, but there's definitely a chance that you may never have feeling in them again, depending on how deep the frostbite got. But there's also a chance you will regain complete feeling in both fingers and they will be fine. "

Kensi looked down, a bit disappointed but nevertheless coping. It wasn't going to kill her. She knew it was too much for her to expect that she could just freeze to death and recover perfectly and beat all the medical odds against her without any limitations whatsoever. There had to be a few scars, and she would just have to deal with them. She was just thankful she was alive.

She looked back up at him.

"As for the shivering, that's all mental. Your body temperature is completely normal. The reason you're feeling cold is simply a psychological response to emotional and mental trauma," the doctor said.

Kensi shook her head. "I'm not traumatized. I'm fine. I'm great," she said, a little too joyfully to be convincing.

"You may think that, but nobody, no matter how logical or emotionally strong, can be completely fine after freezing to death. It was a slow, painful death, whether you want to admit it or not-"

"I'm not saying that it wasn't slow or painful. It was very slow, and it was very, _very_ painful," Kensi said, agreeing with him.

Deeks winced when Kensi put emphasis on her second "very."

"But I am _not_ traumatized. I've been in a lot of bad situations-"

"But I'd assume this was the worst," the doctor said.

Kensi began to wonder if the doctor was just enjoying fighting with her.

"Yes," she admitted reluctantly. "But I'm not traumatized. And everybody keeps talking about me like I actually died, mentioning "my death" and whatnot. I didn't die! I was in my body the whole time! Dead people typically disappear forever, and I am sitting right here fighting with you!" she argued.

"I'd prefer not to call it an argument," the doctor said, chuckling a bit. "And although you might not like to hear it, you _did_ die. Your heart stopped beating. You didn't have a pulse. You were very dead. Dead people do typically disappear forever, but this wasn't typical. Sometimes, people who freeze to death are able to be revived, assuming their spirits haven't moved on."

"You're a doctor, and you believe in a higher power?" Kensi asked incredulously.

"Of course. Not common, I know. But I've seen a few too many miracles to call them miracles anymore," he said.

Kensi looked at him, a bit surprised.

"Just out of interest, um…Did you, you know…experience anything of the afterlife? Sorry…I wouldn't ask if this happened more often…But there's hardly any people who actually die and are revived," the doctor said, in a much less confident voice than the one he'd been speaking in.

Kensi knew he was just interested. She could tell he was very religious.

"You're assuming that I believe there is an afterlife," she said.

The doctor looked at her for a moment. "Do you not?" he asked.

She stared at him for a long moment. "I do. But for the record, the answer is no. I didn't, um…experience anything. I'd like to believe it's because I wasn't dead long enough," she said, chuckling sarcastically. "I honestly don't remember anything from after I died. It was like I just blacked out and woke up again, like when you hit your head too hard and pass out. It didn't feel like I died. The last thing I remember was being unable to keep my eyes open from exhaustion, and just going to sleep."

The doctor nodded, giving her a small smile. "All right. Well, if that's all you need…You can leave now. Remember that any chills or shivers you may get are all psychological, and don't let them worry you into thinking anything is wrong."

He then turned to Deeks. "Keep her away from work for a couple days minimum, just because of the emotional trauma that she does _not_ have," he said, winking and turning back to Kensi.

"Wait, don't I have some kind of papers to sign? Billing information or something?" she asked, looking up at him.

"That's already been taken care of," he said confusedly, thinking she'd already known.

Kensi turned her head and looked at Deeks, who took a step back.

"Hetty beat me to it," he said.

Kensi shook her head, laughing a bit. "Okay. I appreciate everything so much, Dr. Sanders. Thank you," she said.

He gave a small nod and a smile, and then left her room.

Now Kensi was left alone with Deeks. She stared up at him.

"Want to get out of here?" he asked, grinning.

"Please."

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**AN: Wasn't that chapter just a relief? (: The next chapter is going to be a lot better, this was just the kind of chapter where I had to wrap up the medical stuff, so I apologize if it was boring. I hope I didn't let anybody down! REVIEW!(:**


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Hey guys! Super sorry about the annoyingly slow update. School started today and I'm a newbie so it's a little difficult, I'm already having homework and junk/: So yeah, sorry about the slow update, but hopefully you like this chapter!**

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"I'm going to be sick tomorrow," Deeks said jokingly into the phone, holding it with his ear and shoulder in order to keep his hands on the steering wheel.

He'd said he was calling Hetty. Kensi hadn't known he was taking off.

"Okay. Thanks. If you need me, just call."

Then Deeks hung up the phone and glanced at Kensi.

"Taking the day off?" she asked.

"Yeah. She's not even going to count it as one of my vacation days," he replied.

She nodded.

A few minutes later, Deeks spoke again. "When we were talking to the owner of the restaurant and he told me about the tape, he told me he'd be there sort of late, emptying the expensive foods out of the freezer and taking them to his personal fridge so he could save them from expiring while the door was being fixed. He said we could swing by and grab the video from him tonight if we wanted to," Deeks said, looking over at Kensi only briefly, in order to keep his eyes focused on the road.

Kensi glanced at him for a split second but then returned her gaze to her car window. The whole car ride, she had been silently looking out the window. Deeks knew she had probably just been thinking; there was definitely a lot she could be thinking about at the moment.

"We can get it, I guess," she said. "One less thing to do tomorrow."

Deeks nodded and continued driving. Kensi was silent until they got to the restaurant. When they got there, she stared at it blankly.

"Uh…Can you go get it, Deeks? I don't want to go in," she said.

"Yeah."

Deeks left the car and Kensi watched as he walked into the restaurant. A few minutes later, he came back to the car and tapped on Kensi's window. She rolled it down.

"The guy wants to talk to you," he said.

Kensi shook her head. "About what?"

"He just wants to apologize," Deeks informed her. "But you don't have to come if you don't want to," he added. He didn't want her to have any more emotional trauma that he knew good and well she had, even if she denied it.

"No, it's fine. I'll come in," she said. She pushed open the car door reluctantly and headed towards the restaurant behind Deeks. When she got inside, she walked to the back of the restaurant and saw the owner. Behind him, she saw the freezer. It was wide open, without a door. She shivered and her teeth started chattering. Deeks glanced over at her and realized this.

The restaurant owner looked up just a few seconds before Kensi had to turn away from him. She couldn't look at the freezer. She rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself up. Her teeth were still chattering, because the image of the freezer was now stuck in her head again, and it was almost like her automatic response to seeing it was to feel cold, because she had been cold from the moment she entered the freezer until the moment she died in it.

Deeks grabbed her by the shoulders and rubbed her arms for her. Her skin wasn't actually cold whatsoever, but she had goose bumps all over her arms. He lead her away from the back of the restaurant to a table and then pulled down a chair. She sat down, and then he pulled down the other two and he sat across from her.

"Kensi. Are you okay?" he asked.

Kensi was still shivering a bit, but the image of the freezer had now gone away because she was looking directly at Deeks.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," she said.

Deeks, still concerned about her, placed his hand over hers, which was resting on the table.

Deeks' hand was warm and comforting, and it reminded Kensi that she was just imagining that she was cold. Her doctor's words flew through her mind: "_The reason you're feeling cold is simply a psychological response to emotional and mental trauma."_

Kensi stopped shivering suddenly, and she felt normal again. When she looked up, she saw the owner of the restaurant sit down at the third chair at the table, beside her and Deeks.

"I'm Trevor," he said, holding out his hand for her to shake.

Kensi didn't shake his hand. She refused to move her hand from Deeks' grip. She didn't want to risk getting shivers again. She didn't care if she seemed rude.

Trevor held his hand out for a few seconds, and when he realized she wasn't going to shake it, he dropped it down to his side awkwardly. He looked into her eyes with his own hazel/gold ones, and scratched at his stubble nervously.

Kensi wasn't trying to be disrespectful, but she didn't feel like she owed anything to this guy anyway. She didn't think it was his fault that she'd been locked in the freezer, but she did think that he could have been more careful with his equipment and had it more accurately inspected before using it. So in a way, she did think it was his fault. But not really.

"I'm so sorry about what happened to you. I really should have bought a more expensive, better-quality freezer in the first place. But this has never happened to us before-"

Kensi interrupted him. "Has this ever happened to _anybody_ before?" she interrogated, once again not meaning to be as rude as she sounded.

"Not that I've ever heard of. I don't have any idea what could have happened," he said, regret weighing down his voice.

Kensi shook her head. "I don't blame you. It was my fault that it jammed. I was running from the man who kidnapped me, and when I got inside, it was really dark. I just grabbed the only door handle I found and went inside. Whenever I got in the freezer, I knew my kidnapper was about to come into the restaurant, and I didn't want him to hear me because I couldn't risk him finding where I was hiding. It would have been hard to hide from him if he got inside and heard the freezer door closing…So after I got in the freezer, I slammed the door as quickly and as hard as I could. It was stupid, but at the time, I didn't know that I was in a freezer," she explained.

Trevor's eyes were very wide by the time Kensi finished her story. "So you're telling me that you were kidnapped, and were running away from your captor when you got locked in a freezer and literally froze to death, all in one day?" he asked, just to verify.

Kensi nodded. "It sounds so harsh when you put it that way."

"It seemed pretty harsh to me in the video…" he started. "I really wasn't trying to watch it…I was just transferring the video onto a DVD and off of the computer, and it started playing at one point," he said, trying to defend himself.

She looked at him with a kind of blank expression on her face, not feeling comfortable with the fact that someone had seen the things she'd done in the freezer. The things she'd said, the way she had screamed and cried while she was beating on the door. She felt pathetic.

"How much did you watch?" she asked.

"Not much. Just enough to wonder whether or not you've talked to your partner yet."

Kensi tried not to let her cheeks get red. She wanted to slap Trevor. "All right, that's great. Well, we really need to get going. Can I just have-"

"Whoa, wait, have you talked to me yet? Have you talked to me about what?" Deeks cut in, his eyes sparkling with amusement and attentiveness.

"Nothing. Trevor is confused," Kensi said. Then she turned to Trevor. "Look, I'm really tired. Can we please just have the video so I can get to bed soon?" she asked.

Trevor chuckled but nodded and left the table to get the DVD.

"What would you need to talk to me about?" Deeks questioned, grinning at her knowingly.

"Don't flatter yourself, Deeks. There's nothing to talk about. Whenever I got upset in the freezer, I said a few things to you. I mean, not _to you, _to you, but I just kind of spoke my thoughts out loud. It was no big deal, I didn't really say much," she lied.

He just stared at her, his mouth frozen in a stupidly pleased smile. Kensi shook her head as if she was disgusted with him, and stood up from the table. She walked to the back of the restaurant and met Trevor halfway through her path. He handed her a DVD in a Ziploc bag, and she took it from him, looking down at it for a moment. Then she looked back up at him.

"Thanks," she said.

He nodded, and Deeks turned around to leave. When he realized Kensi wasn't following him, he turned back around and stared at her expectantly.

"Just, um…give me a second. I think it might help me a little if I just…" Kensi's voice trailed off as she walked towards the freezer. Deeks followed her but stayed outside, knowing what she was trying to do. She would never admit it to Deeks, but she was trying to face her fears instead of desperately trying to forget about them. She needed to accept what happened to her instead of trying to get away from it, because it would never go away, especially if her fingers never regained feeling. If her fingers didn't get better, they would be a daily reminder of what happened to her, and it would be impossible to forget. So Kensi had to take this opportunity to accept what happened.

Deeks watched her closely. She walked in and looked around, seemingly inspecting every inch of the freezer. Then she sat down beside the door frame.

"My special spot," Deeks heard her say under her breath.

She sat there for a minute, and then she walked around for a bit. Her teeth were chattering and she was shivering wildly, goose bumps covering both of her arms and legs.

Kensi walked to the very back of the freezer and stared at the corner formed by a large shelf and the back wall of the freezer. Deeks immediately recognized it as the spot where he found her when he got into the freezer. It was the spot where she had died.

She sat down and pushed her knees to the side, sitting the way she had been when she died. She was shivering wildly, her whole body shaking violently occasionally. She laid her head against the corner of the shelf and closed her eyes gently. She felt so cold. It was so, so cold. Suddenly everything came flying back into her mind, a few things that she thought was strange she could even remember. She remembered the way she was so freezing and she knew she was going to die…that inevitability of death that made her hopeless and allowed her to be at peace with herself when she closed her eyes. She remembered how her body had felt at first…Everywhere was tingling, and she couldn't feel her nose, her ears, her fingers, or her toes. Her whole body was in so much pain, the agony had made her okay with giving up and dying. Then, Kensi remembered how her mind started to go away from her body. She remembered how she started to see and feel nothing more than the blackness of the inside of her eyelids. Her pain was gone, and she went to sleep…dying.

Kensi's eyes flew open and she saw Deeks in front of her. She came back to reality slowly, and stood up, moving away from her death spot.

She walked out of the freezer and looked back, and gave it one last look. Then she spit on the floor of it, tons of anger packed into the one small puddle of saliva, and turned her back away.

Deeks raised his eyebrows at her action, but followed her out of the restaurant in silence, not knowing what to do or say.

Kensi opened the car door and set the DVD inside, but she didn't get in. Deeks wasn't inside either yet; he was looking at Kensi. She had her hands on the roof of the car, leaning on it, and her head bowed. She was taking slow, deep breaths. She finally looked back up and composed herself. Deeks walked around to her side of the car and surprised her by what he did next.

He walked up to her, looked at her for a few seconds, and then pulled her into a hug. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other around her small waist, and pulled her close to him. He gripped a little bit of her hair. At first, she just stood there. Then she hugged him back, enjoying it as much as he was. She closed her eyes and held onto him.

"Deeks-"

"I don't think you're okay, Kensi," he started. A moment of silence followed before he spoke again. "I think you needed a hug, whether you thought so or not. I think the freezer scares you more than you act like it does. I think you remember more about death than you act like you do. I _don't_ think you realize the way I felt when I found you, dead," he said.

Kensi started to reluctantly pull back, and Deeks pressed his lips gently to her cheek. He didn't make a loud kissing noise, but he didn't grossly slobber all over her either. He just kissed her gently, quietly, and subtly on the cheek.

Kensi pulled back all the way finally, and looked at Deeks for a long moment, her gaze speaking volumes of her affection that she didn't know how to show.

"Maybe I don't," she said.

Deeks looked away from her for a second, and then back at the restaurant, trying to find words to explain himself without getting too gushy. Then he looked back at her.

"I was going for a world record, Kens. The longest amount of time gone without shedding a tear. I was going on eleven years, I only had about five years to go. Now I'm never going to be famous," he said, grinning.

Kensi chuckled light-heartedly, not wanting to acknowledge anything other than Deeks' joke, even though she was really feeling touched by what he'd said. She was somewhat nervous to say anything, but she felt obligated to say something back to him when he'd just confessed something so embarrassing for him, so she knew she had to say _something_.

"I would have gone to sleep a lot earlier in the freezer if I didn't have you to come home to," she admitted with a moment of silence following. "Meaning I would have died a lot earlier."

Deeks looked at her, maintaining eye contact for a long, silent moment.

"And I _may_ have said a little more than a couple words to you while I was in the freezer," she added.

He grinned for a second, but then his grin slowly faded as he continued to look into her eyes, his expression getting serious. Finally, he broke the gaze.

"Let's get home. You need a shower and some sleep," he said, giving her a small smile.

Kensi chuckled. "Is this your way of telling me that I smell bad?" she questioned.

He laughed. "Like tuna," he said as he walked around the car and climbed into the driver's seat.

Kensi climbed in the passenger's seat. "Wow," she said.

"I'm kidding," Deeks said.

"You always are," Kensi replied.

The car ride to Deeks' house was short, and they were both beginning to feel the way they were before Kensi's abduction and then death and revival. Kensi was still more into her thoughts than she'd ever been before, and Deeks could see that she was still thinking a lot about her death, but she was doing a lot better. Deeks thought it had helped that she had visited the freezer again and let herself remember and accept what happened.

When they got to Deeks' house, she went to the extra bedroom and sat on the bed. Deeks appeared in the doorway after a minute with a pair of pajama pants and a big t-shirt. She took them from him, trying to give him a grateful smile but too tired to put much effort into it.

"You look exhausted. At least Vanderbilt drugged me so I got _a little_ sleep. Go to bed, Deeks," she said.

He shook his head. "I will in a minute."

Kensi, not understanding him but not trying to, left the room and went to the bathroom. She was in there for a minute, taking care of multiple things including rinsing her face, and then went back into the room. She turned out the lights and laid down in the bed that Deeks was still sitting on, wondering what he was doing still.

"Deeks. I'm going to bed. Why are you in here?"

"I'm just going to wait until you fall asleep," he said.

"I'm not going to fall asleep with you sitting in here staring at me. That's so awkward, I'll be up all night if you stay there," she said.

"How is that awkward?" he asked, amused.

"It just is! You're sitting there looking at me, and I feel like you're expecting something of me. I feel like I have to force myself to fall asleep so that you'll be pleased. It's just awkward, okay?" she said.

Deeks laughed at her but left the room anyway. He still wanted to make sure she fell asleep though, so he sat in his living room on the couch for about ten minutes. After those ten minutes, he went to Kensi's room and cracked the door quietly, to see if she was asleep.

"What is it? Is everything okay?" she asked, sitting up attentively.

"Yeah. I was just seeing if you were asleep."

Kensi laid back down, sighing in exasperation. "I don't need you to check on me. Goodnight, Deeks," she said, dismissing him.

Deeks went ahead and left and got in bed, realizing that what he was doing was pointless. He went to sleep the second his head hit the pillow; he was as exhausted as Kensi had known he was.

Kensi struggled to sleep for a little while, her mind wandering off to the freezer sometimes. She thought of it occasionally, having difficulty being at mental peace enough to sleep. But her exhaustion overthrew her mind's pull, and she fell asleep after about 20 minutes, falling into a deep sleep of more dreams than rest.

...

_Kensi opened her eyes and was relieved to see that she was lying in a hospital room. It was large and white, and she felt so comfortable now that she was wrapped in large thermal blankets. She felt so warm. She was so happy to feel all of her toes, and her ears, and most of her fingers. She turned her head to her left and saw Deeks looking at her. _

"_Deeks!" she said, grinning at him. _

_He got up and hugged her. She pulled back because she needed to talk to him. _

"_I have to tell you something, Deeks. I have to tell you now that I have the chance."_

_He stood beside her bed, nodding. "You can tell me after your treatment," he said. _

_She shook her head. "Treatment can wait," she said. _

"_It can't, Kensi. I was told to get the doctor the second you wake up," he argued. _

_She frowned but gave in. "Fine. Can you come to treatment with me?" she asked. _

_He chuckled. "Of course not. I'd get cold," he said. _

_This didn't sound like Deeks at all. This wasn't something Deeks would ever say to her…This wasn't him. "Why would you get cold? And who cares? Put on a jacket and come with me!" she said. She realized that she didn't sound much like herself either. _

"_I can't do that, Kensi. Going into the freezer again will save you, but not me. I don't need to go in there," he said. _

_Kensi's eyes widened and she stared at him incredulously. "What do you mean? Why would my treatment be in the freezer?" she questioned him. _

"_Sweetie, we've gone over this so many times. You are in a mental facility-"_

"_A mental facility?" she interrupted him, not understanding what was going on. _

"_Yes. The freezer accident put you in a mental state that is unacceptable to live in. Now you're at this facility to get help and learn how to move on from your trauma," he explained with exasperation. _

"_I don't have trauma! I'm fine, Deeks! I don't need treatment!" she shouted. _

_Right after she closed her mouth, several doctors appeared in her hospital room. They all looked exactly alike…They were triplets, or something! They all had the same black hair and blue eyes, with pale skin. They looked like the same person. _

"_It's time for your treatment, Miss Blye," one of the triplets said, grabbing Kensi by the arm. _

_She fought to get him to release her, but one of the other triplets came up to help him, grabbing her other arm. She continued fighting, trying to get away. She didn't need treatment. _

"_Deeks, what are you doing? Help me! Get them off of me!" she yelled. She didn't recognize herself much. She'd never heard her voice so angry. Maybe she was crazy. _

_The doctors practically drug her out of the room, with her kicking and screaming the whole time. _

_Deeks was gone, and now she was alone with the triplet doctors. She kept fighting, and she finally kicked one of the doctors in the face. He stayed on the ground, holding his bleeding nose. To Kensi's surprise, though, another doctor that looked just like the three that had been carrying her appeared, walking out of a hallway. This was so strange. What was going on here? _

_The doctors carried Kensi all the way down the hall, and when they got there, they stopped at a large metal door. _

"_What's going on?" she spat. _

"_You need to face your fears, Miss Blye. Once we see improvement, we will stop putting you in the freezer and we will let you have different forms of therapy," one of the doctors said in a smooth, calm tone. _

_Kensi shook her head, screaming as the doctor opened the metal door and she was faced with the freezer she had died in. She started shaking, shivers running down her spine. The doctor threw her roughly into the freezer, and slammed the door shut. _

_She ran towards the door as fast as she could, but it was no use; the door was locked. She began crying, and beating on the door. After a minute of beating on the door, Kensi was surprised when she felt water sprinkle onto her head from above. She looked up to the ceiling to see that there were sprinklers on, dripping tons of freezing cold water onto her, drenching her as she stood in the freezer, which was even colder than it had been when she'd died in it. She couldn't handle this. She couldn't freeze to death again. _

_She ran towards the door and started beating on it again, but it wasn't opening. She was going to die in here again…_

_..._

Kensi's eyes busted open and she found herself staring at a ceiling fan. She sat up quickly, looking around. Deeks' house. She was at Deeks' house.

She suddenly remembered coming here, and falling asleep with the large blankets pulled all around her. When she got her breath back and calmed down a bit, she found tears surrounding her eyes. She had cried in her dream. She remembered all of her dream, which was odd because she often forgot them. But she remembered every single horrible detail of this one, and it wasn't going to leave her mind any time soon.

**AN: I know this is a stupid place to leave off. No cool ending or cliffhanger or anything. I just had to end it because I really wanted to update tonight and not leave y'all waiting another day, so I decided this would have to be good enough! I do admit that this is NOT my best chapter, but I'm thinking that my next chapter ought to be pretty good, as long as I can find a way to stay in character! BTW, I know you guys wanted Deeks to stay in bed with Kensi, or for him to kiss her on the lips instead of the cheek….But you have to be patient! If I rush them into it then it will be OOC and the story will have to end sooner! So wait for the next chapter, it will be better I promise(: REVIEW!(: **


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: So sorry for making you guys wait so long. Super busy with school and everything. This is most likely the last chapter! But it's long so enjoy it!**

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Kensi climbed out of bed and rubbed away the wetness around her eyes. She heard loud splats of rain on the roof. She walked over to the window and pulled back the blinds, peering through the glass at the sky. It was black and pouring heavy rain, and Kensi was blinded as a large strike of lightening zig-zagged across the sky and touched the ground, far away. She pushed the blinds back in place and walked out of the dark room, hearing thunder shortly afterwards.

The rain was making the same sound as the sprinklers from her dream, making the image of the freezer reappear in her mind. She could feel its coldness again, even though she was standing in Deeks' warm house.

Forcing herself to focus on the warmth outside of her instead of the cold inside of her, Kensi walked into the living room, sitting on Deeks' couch. She heard another loud boom of thunder, and the rain was only getting louder. She kept thinking of the sprinklers.

Kensi, trying to force the image out of her mind, averted her eyes to the coffee table. Her pupils rested on a shiny disc in a plastic bag, sitting there glimmering. She grabbed it and looked at it.

She didn't know why she was doing it, but she got up and walked to Deeks' DVD player. She knew it made no sense that she wanted to watch it. She wasn't even sure that she wanted to watch it. A piece of her thought it might help to watch it and see how long she stayed awake, to watch herself not give up and try harder. She thought it might help to see that sprinklers never came on, and the look on her face when she died was not one of agony, because she was not in agony. She wanted to remember that she wasn't in pain when she died. She wanted to remember that she was still enthusiastic even in the freezer, she wanted to remember that she still joked with herself and sang silly songs at the top of her lungs. She wanted to remember all of the good things that happened in the freezer, so that maybe the bad things would balance out a little and the overall idea of what had happened to her wouldn't be so harsh. The accident wasn't going away any time soon, no matter what she did. She didn't think it was possible for her trauma to get much worse anyway, so what was wrong with watching the DVD? There was a risk that it _wouldn't_ work, but even then, it wouldn't make her feel a whole lot worse than she was feeling now.

She pushed it into the player, turned on the TV, and started to mess with the remote until the DVD finally played. It started out a few seconds before she had run into the freezer. The screen was pitch black.

She grabbed a blanket from the side of Deeks' couch and pulled it up to her chin, trying to stay as warm as possible while she watched this. She heard the clicking of the door opening, and she saw light stream into the freezer, giving her a slight view of the all-too-familiar area. A few seconds later, the light to the freezer turned on and Kensi saw herself. She looked so much better in the video than she looked at this moment; she had on make up, and she overall looked more like herself. She wasn't herself right now. She wasn't herself at all. She was trying to be, but her emotions and trauma were overriding her attempts.

Kensi watched the tape for about an hour, skipping through parts when nothing was happening and she was simply sitting down. She was watching a part where she was singing "Keep Holding On," slightly laughing at herself, when she heard a loud noise beat on the door. It sounded like a baseball had been thrown with a large amount of force at Deeks' house. Then the same loud noise occurred again, and then started occurring in twos and threes. It was hail, and it was _loud_.

The hail got more and more frequent until it was constant, and Kensi couldn't hear the TV at all. Surprisingly, the TV stayed on, meaning they still had power. It was odd, but Kensi knew it wouldn't last much longer.

She stood up from the couch, her ears becoming annoyed with the loud, constant sound of hail beating at the house. She turned around and headed towards the door to look outside when she heard Deeks' voice behind her.

"Wow, you're going to be the next Audrey Hepburn," he said.

Kensi spun around and saw Deeks looking at the TV, watching her. He had cracked the Hepburn joke, but after watching him for a minute, Kensi saw his facial expression drop from one of humor to one of sadness. It was because of the video, Kensi knew.

She walked up to him and grabbed his shoulder, pulling his attention away from the screen. "Don't watch that, Deeks," she said.

"Why are you watching it?" he questioned.

"I…thought it would help. I don't know," she said. "So I'm guessing the storm woke you up?" she asked.

"Yeah. You too? You look like you've been up a lot longer than me," he said confusedly.

"I didn't wake up because of the storm," she said, sitting down on his couch.

Deeks sat beside her. "Then why did you wake up?" he asked.

"What?" Kensi asked. She was unable to hear him over the hail.

He scooted closer to her and raised his voice slightly. "Why did you wake up if it wasn't the storm?"

Her face dropped and she turned her head to the TV. Deeks continued to gaze at her adamantly, so she finally turned back to him.

"You can't make some kind of asshole joke if I tell you," she said.

He shook his head, looking serious enough to handle anything. He wanted to assure her that he could be serious and listen to her without cracking a joke.

"I…had a dream. A bad one, I guess," she admitted.

"You guess?"

"Well, no. It was horrible."

"Let's go to my room, okay? It's quieter in there," Deeks said.

Kensi nodded and stood up, walking behind Deeks to his room. When they got inside, Deeks shut his door and shoved a towel in the crack between the door and the floor. There were no windows in his room, quite oddly, so it was much quieter. They were glad they could speak without practically yelling and getting so close they could taste each other…even though they kind of liked that part.

"So. Tell me about this dream," Deeks said, sitting in his bed, pulling the covers up to him and patting the spot next to him.

Kensi didn't want to let herself get into bed with Deeks, in fear of what could happen, but she really_, really_ wanted to talk to somebody. Plus, right now, she just didn't care. She didn't care what happened. She was upset, and traumatized, and her mind was bothering her. She was crazily worried that she would continue having trouble going to sleep, or she would be scared to sleep because she knew she'd have nightmares. So right now, she didn't care about maintaining professionalism. Right now, Deeks was the only thing to salvage her from her mental, emotional, and slight physical pain. He was all she had, and she needed him.

So, throwing away her last bit of sophistication, she crawled into the spot next to Deeks, and pulled the blanket up, snuggling with it aggressively. She looked over at Deeks, who was watching her with concern.

"You can't get mad either…You weren't exactly the good guy in the dream…" she said.

Deeks frowned. "What do you mean? I'm always the good guy, I'm the _great_ guy!" he exclaimed. "Heaven 24/7, don't forget it!"

"Deeks!" Kensi snapped, trying to get him to shut up.

"I won't get mad," he promised, his face falling back into an expression of utter seriousness, his lightly mustached mouth forming a straight, small line under his little nose.

"It started out that I…woke up in the hospital. It was like when I _really_ woke up at the hospital; I remembered everything that happened to me and I had died, and everything. It was normal at first. I woke up fine, and then I looked over and saw you. I was glad to see you and you were glad to see me, just like it really was when I woke up…at least I'd like to think so…?" she said questioningly, looking to him for approval.

He nodded. "I was…pretty damned glad to see you," he admitted.

She gave him a small smile and continued her story. "So you hugged me, and after that is when things changed. I realized that I had to tell you something really important. I was about to tell you, Deeks…I really wanted to tell you. I told you how important it was, because _believe me,_ it was important. But you told me that I had to get treatment immediately. I told you that treatment could wait because I needed to tell you something, but you said that I had to go to treatment first no matter what. I finally gave in, and asked you to go with me. You said no because it was too cold. I didn't understand at all, so I started questioning you. You told me that I had gone crazy and I was in a mental hospital, and my treatment was in a freezer. I was scared to death…The doctors came into the room to take me away. It was really strange because the doctors were clones…They were all the same person. Anyway, they took me to the freezer. It was horrible. When I got inside, they locked me in there and turned on sprinklers on the ceiling. So I was soaked in cold water and I was in a freezer, and I was freezing to death all over again," she said.

Deeks stared at her for a minute, and then grabbed her hand. He wasn't sure what to say; he didn't really have words.

"So you felt it again?" he finally murmured.

"Yeah."

She shivered tremendously, and Deeks rubbed her arm, feeling goose bumps all over her. He grabbed both of her arms and stroked them gently, wondering why she hadn't slapped him yet. Then he remembered that she wasn't really herself; she wasn't as crazy as she seemed to worry that she was, but she wasn't really herself either.

"What did you need to tell me, in the dream?" Deeks asked.

Kensi shook her head. "I…I don't remember. I don't know," she lied.

"You know, whenever you're lying, you tend to look down at your hands," Deeks started, looking at her. "Like you're doing right now."

Kensi's eyes darted up from her hands and she turned her head to face him. She knew that she couldn't lie without him knowing. "I…Can't tell you, Deeks. Not now anyway."

Deeks shook his head. "Uh-uh. You can't get away with that. I'll be wondering out of my mind until you tell me. It's not fair."

"Life's not fair," Kensi said. "Or else I wouldn't have died last night, and you wouldn't have gotten shot before. I can't tell you right now."

Deeks was incredibly anxious, but he didn't want to push Kensi or piss her off. Now was _not _the time to piss her off, because she would run off and push him away if she was mad, and whether she wanted to admit it or not, she needed him. He knew that she did.

Deeks was interrupted from his thoughts when the power went out, his light flickering once before the room went pitch black. He stood up and got out of bed but still kept Kensi's hand in his. She stood up with him, and he started to walk towards the door.

"Let's light a couple candles," Kensi said.

"Okay. I know it's your first time and you want it to be special and everything. Do you want me to play some music too?" Deeks asked.

Kensi grinned and slapped him playfully on the chest. "Shut up," she said.

They walked into the kitchen and Deeks felt around until he was at the right drawer. He opened it and grabbed a lighter, and then lit the flame. He was no longer holding Kensi's hand; she was just following him. The hail had gotten much quieter and lighter, and much less frequent. They could now talk in normal tones.

"You look great in this lighting," he said. "You ready to get down to the dirty?"

Kensi grinned but didn't respond.

Deeks held down the button on the lighter until he found a candle, which he lit, and then lit another candle for Kensi.

"We have to remember to blow these out before we fall asleep. I've already frozen to death, I'd rather not burn to death next. Plus, I can't be revived if I burn to death," she explained.

Deeks gave a sort of half-grin, finding humor in what she said but unable to think of it as very funny because of its such literal aspect.

"And your second death would kill me too. So for both of our sakes, let's remember to blow out the candles," he said.

Kensi looked at him for a minute, walking into his living room behind him and sitting on the couch beside him. "I don't think it would _kill_ you…That's, uh, a little melodramatic, don't you think, Deeks?" she said.

Deeks grinned toothily but shook his head. "No way. I'm not one to be melodramatic. And don't think I'm joking because I don't joke either. I'm the most serious person alive."

Kensi chuckled. "So you _are_ melodramatic, and you _are_ exaggerating, and it _wouldn't _kill you," she elaborated.

"Well I can be melodramatic…occasionally…But you're wrong about the rest," he said, holding up a finger.

"No, I-"

Kensi shut her mouth when Deeks pressed a finger to her lips. She looked at him for a moment, not as shocked as she had been the first time he had done it a while back, but still somewhat stunned. Finally, she moved her mouth in a direction that created the illusion that she was about to kiss his finger, but she instead wrapped her mouth around it and bit him-not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough for him to jerk his finger out in fear of being hurt.

"Hey! You're supposed to kiss it, not bite it," Deeks said. "That was sexy for a minute-"

He stopped talking whenever he saw the TV suddenly flicker on and realized they had power back. He wondered how long it would last. The second the TV was on, he saw Kensi on her freezer-angst Hollywood film.

"_I wanna KNOW what love is! I want you to SHOW me!" _Kensi was yelling-not singing, but yelling-in the freezer.

Kensi immediately hopped off the couch and ran up to the DVD player.

"Where's the stop button? Where the hell is the stop button?" she asked aloud, humiliated.

Deeks, laughing, grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the DVD player. She complied because she knew that her singing problem was almost over thankfully; she remembered that she had stopped singing after that song.

She sat back down on the couch next to Deeks, pulling a blanket over her. Deeks snatched half of it, and she found herself scooting closer to him in order to share it.

Deeks watched as Kensi, the Kensi in the tape rather than the one sitting next to him, stopped singing and started to close her eyes.

"Is that when you died?" he asked.

"No, I stayed awake a lot longer than that," she said.

The tape showed Kensi closing her eyes, but then reopening them again and again. Finally, Deeks saw Kensi jump up from the ground, shouting, "No!" as she leapt up. He could have said a million different funny things to her at that moment, but he was feeling strangely, uncharacteristically serious when watching her death.

He watched as she stood up and started pacing the freezer, and after a minute or so, he saw tears running down her cheeks. He couldn't be positive because the video wasn't of great quality, but it certainly looked like she was crying.

Kensi started to stand up from the couch but Deeks held her back with his arm, throwing it across her chest.

"Come on, Deeks, can we stop with the torture? Why do you want to see this?" she asked.

"I just want to know…" he answered, his voice trailing off due to his lack of focus on her.

"Know what?" she asked. She really needed to turn the tape off. She knew that it was getting close to the part where she had talked to an imaginary Deeks, trying to keep herself alive.

Deeks never answered her question, and Kensi fought to get up again, but Deeks held her back. She started to fight through him, but she abruptly stopped when she realized something. She realized that she was still in love with him, as she had been when she was in the freezer. She didn't know why she had been trying so hard to hide it, but it was true. And she was going to have to tell Deeks at some point, because she _had_ to know if he felt the same way about her. She had to know, because she knew she would be missing out on so much if he did and she never said anything. Her field trip to the freezer reminded her that life was short, and she needed to act on her feelings. The worst thing that could happen would be that Deeks would turn her down, and Kensi would have a perfectly fine excuse; she would say that she was exhausted, delirious, suffering from blood loss, and freezing to death, therefore she had no idea what she was saying and it was all a mistake. Then things could go on like they always had been with her and Deeks. And if Deeks did feel the same way, she wanted to know. She _needed_ to know. So she got settled back into the couch, scooted a little closer to Deeks, who was very focused on the video, and tried not to let her heart pound the rest of her organs into jelly. She watched as she stood up again on the video, and she knew it was about to happen. She was about to indirectly confess her love to Deeks.

Kensi grabbed his hand and he looked over at her for a short moment and squeezed hers. He turned his attention back to the video. The Kensi in the video was sitting facing the camera, and she started to speak.

"_Deeks, I'm really cold. I know you're probably worried right now. I'm not sure I'd be able to function if I knew that you were in a freezer, freezing to death. But then again, you don't know I'm here, or else you would've come by now. You have no idea where I am, do you? I'm in a damned freezer! At first I just thought it was somewhat funny that I actually got stuck in a freezer, literally. But now nothing is funny. I bet you're not cracking any jokes now, Deeks, huh? Did Vanderbilt get you? I've been hoping that he didn't, I sort of just had this feeling that you were too smart for him. He's not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed. But I'd like to think that you would have found me already if you're free. But I guess I'm not sure how. I haven't figured that out yet. Aren't there witnesses or something? I miss you, Deeks."_

Deeks turned and looked at Kensi, grabbing the remote from under his butt and pausing the tape.

"You had the remote the whole time I was looking for it!" Kensi exclaimed.

Deeks ignored her comment about the remote and kept a serious face. "No jokes here," he commented.

Kensi gave him a sympathetic type of look. "Don't let this get to you, Deeks…except for the next part. I want the next part to get to you," she said.

He stared at her, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "What's about to happen, Kensi? What happened in the freezer?" he asked, wondering what was going on with her.

"Just play the tape. You'll understand in a few minutes," she said.

He gave her one last look of confusion and then turned back to the TV and played the tape. Kensi pulled her hand away from his so she could give him room to think without her all over him and affecting his judgment.

"_I'm not sure if I'm going to live or die right now. I really don't know what's going to happen. I'd like to have faith that you're going to find me, but I don't know how that would happen. I don't think the odds are really in my favor right now. I think my chances of living are much more slim than my chances of dying. I'm so sleepy. I'm trying to stay awake; that's why I'm talking to you. Do you know what my favorite part of my job is? It's going undercover with you. It's so much fun. I love pretending to be your girlfriend or your wife. Maybe it's because I just like being your girlfriend or wife, all pretending and acting aside. Maybe I would actually like to be your girlfriend. If you could really hear me right now, you'd probably laugh at me. You'd probably say something stupid, like, 'well, that's unfortunate.' I think it was kind of hard not to fall for you, at least somewhat. Like you said, Deeks, you're just heaven 24/7." _

Deeks paused the video and turned to Kensi again. His confusion was gone now, but he looked like he was just in shock.

"Why would you think I'd say that?"

Kensi shook her head. "We aren't discussing this yet, Deeks. I'm not done. Stop talking and play the video."

He looked at her for a minute longer but then looked back at the TV and played it again.

"_I would really like to see you again. Even if I die, I hope I get to see you again. I hope you find me before I'm dead, even if I'm going to die. I just really want to see you again before I die. I have to tell you that I think I'm in love with you. Maybe. I'm not completely sure of myself, but this is the most sure I've ever been with anybody in my life. I know I've never been this certain that I'm in love, even if I'm really not certain I'm truly in love with you…" _

Deeks sat back into the couch slowly, exchanging a nervous glance with Kensi when she stopped talking on the tape for a moment. When she started speaking again on the tape, he immediately started watching it again.

"_You know, screw it, Deeks. I'm in love with you. I don't think so, I know so. I'm certain. I don't know how long it will last for me, but I know I'm in love with you right now. I have to see you again." _

Deeks sucked in a breath as the Kensi on the video stood up from the freezer floor, her body blue-ish white and her teeth chattering insanely.

"_But I don't know if that's going to happen. I'm so cold, Deeks. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how much longer I can hang on. If I live through this, I should definitely write a book. Who else can say that they nearly froze to death? I mean, I'm not sure whether I'm near death right now or not. I don't know how long it takes for someone to freeze to death. I didn't really think I was ever going to need to know that information, it wasn't on my list of things to search on Google. I'm really cold. I'm so pissed off at myself. I can't help it. If you were here, you would tell me not to blame myself. You would say that I couldn't have known the door would jam, you would say that I never knew I was stepping into a freezer in the first place and there was no way it was my fault. But it is. You see the best in me, Deeks, but this really is my fault. There's no way of skipping around it. I walked into a freezer and slammed the door as hard as I possibly could. Could I have been any more stupid? What did I think it was? How did I not know I was walking into a freezer in the first place? What other kind of private rooms are there in the back of restaurants? There are none! There are fridges and freezers! I wish I could have at least walked a bit further and ended up in the fridge. Then I could at least be guaranteed that I wouldn't die. If I was in a fridge, I could have waited until tomorrow when the restaurant opens back up and the workers found me. But I'm not. I'm in the freezer. And I can't last ten more hours, Deeks. I used to have hope that I could just wait for the workers to find me, but now that it's been three hours and I already feel like I'm going to die soon, I know there's no way I could live until tomorrow afternoon. I'm not sure it's impossible, but I think I would have to be a bit fatter for that to work. If you were here, you would crack a joke about how conceited that sounded. Either that or you would make some sort of twisted compliment about my body. I'm really ready to hear your jokes again, Deeks. Please find me. This is really frustrating." _

Deeks, unable to really speak, just continued to watch the video. His eyebrows were furrowed as if he was hurt, but Kensi knew it was just because it was painful for him to watch her die.

He watched as Kensi paced around the freezer a bit longer, and then he saw her approach the door. She started pounding on it, not trying to get out because she knew it was impossible, but really just pounding on it to get out her anger. Deeks could see her expression, which was contorted because she was crying and also angry. He could hear her crying. It made him want to cry.

"Deeks, you shouldn't watch this part…really," Kensi said, grabbing his arm.

He shook his head, dismissing her and continuing to watch.

"_This is so ridiculous! This is just stupid!" _

She continued pounding on the door for several minutes, crying harder and harder. Deeks didn't really want to watch this anymore because it was so difficult for him, but part of him just had to know what she had been through. He had already seen so much, he couldn't just turn off the TV and not know how much longer she suffered.

"_I…am freezing to death!"_

Finally, Kensi stopped punching the door, and spit on it. Then she paced for a moment longer, and sat down in the spot where Deeks had found her. He knew this was the part where she died. But knowing that she was dying on this part didn't make it any easier for him to watch.

She leaned against the shelf, still crying, and began blinking a lot. Her eyes stayed closed longer and longer with every blink until finally, they stayed closed. Her chest continued to rise and fall for about a minute longer, and then she visibly died. Deeks knew the second she died. It was like he just knew. Most of it was because her chest stopped moving altogether and she was as still as a dead person, but Deeks knew the _second_ she died that she had died. He had known before her chest stopped moving. He looked at her dead body for a minute longer, and then turned off the TV. It turned off with a blinding zap of static and the room went black, but Kensi and Deeks could still see each other because of the candles they had never blown out.

Deeks turned and looked at Kensi, and she looked at him back, neither of them moving. Everything was quiet for a minute, but then Deeks opened his mouth.

"I…I don't think I realized it was that bad. How did you… feel…before you died?" he asked.

Kensi looked down at the candles on his coffee table, unable to look Deeks in the eyes when she lied to him about something serious.

"I couldn't feel most of my body. I didn't feel much. The only reason I was crying is because I didn't want to die," she said.

Deeks shook his head and grabbed her arm roughly. It wasn't rough in an abusive leave-a-bruise type of way, but Kensi thought of it as rough simply because it was rough for Deeks, meaning not actually rough at all but just not gentle. He was never even slightly rough towards her unless he was pulling her away from a gunshot or danger.

"Damn it, Kensi, why are you still lying? What's the point? I watched the video with you, I heard _everything_ you said! Why can't you just open up now?" he spat, not angrily but really just very frustrated.

Kensi had a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face for a short moment, and then her facial expression turned into one of resignation.

What was the point in lying to him anyway? The initial reason she'd lied to him was because she didn't want to bother him even more or let him know how horrific it _really_ was, but she now realized that nothing she said could be much worse than the things his imagination could tell him. She had to at least give him closure.

She looked back up at him and opened her mouth to speak.

"I couldn't feel my fingers, ears, or nose. I was losing feeling in my toes but they were in a lot of pain…The rest of my body was in a lot of pain. Well, not just a lot. More than a lot. Everything was tingling. The tingles hurt; it was like being burned with a thousand cigarettes at one time. I didn't start crying until I knew that I was going to die. When I thought I had a chance at living, I forced myself not to cry because my tears were so cold. I couldn't feel my throat very well, it was swollen. The wounds from Vanderbilt's wires on my wrists and ankles were hurting a lot because my flesh was open to the freezing air. The cigarettes just kept coming and coming…it felt like I was being burned over and over and over, every inch of my body at the same time," she explained.

Deeks' face by the time Kensi was finished could only be described as disturbed. She looked at him for a long minute, but he wasn't responding; Kensi knew she'd given too much detail and he was now having some pretty painful imagery. She reached out and grabbed his arm.

"It's over now, though. Stop thinking about it."

He finally made eye contact with her, his mind back in its place. He stood up, and Kensi thought he was going to leave. She wasn't sure where he was going, but she thought he was leaving. She stood up to follow him, and he pulled her into his arms, hugging her.

"Clever," she commented, chuckling.

Deeks didn't laugh back or even smile.

When she finally pulled back from him, he looked at her.

"Were you serious…about the things you said to me in the freezer?" he asked.

She looked up at him, her eyes opened widely. "Yeah."

He nodded, looking over to the side for a minute, smiling a bit, and looking back at her. "Yeah?" he asked, grinning at her.

She nodded.

He nodded too, smiling and mimicking her. Then his face dropped completely and went back to a serious expression. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?" he spat.

Just when Kensi had thought she was off the hook and they were back to all-smiles-and-jokes Kensi and Deeks, he had been totally messing with her.

"I didn't know for sure until…"

"Until you were dying," he finished for her.

She nodded.

Deeks backed away from Kensi. "I don't think that it was…real, Kensi. I think you were just feeling that way because you were dying."

Kensi processed his words for a moment and then shook her head. "No, Deeks, it _was_ real! I know it's real because I'm feeling it right now!" she said aggressively. It was time to be honest with herself and with him. They needed to settle things. But as she looked at him, her facial expression fell when she realized what was going on here.

"Wait…I understand now," she said, backing even further away from him. "Deeks, you don't have to feel like you have to talk me out of my feelings because you don't want to reject me. I can handle it," she said.

Deeks shook his head, confusion etched on his face. "No, you don't understand now," he said.

She stared at him, and he stared back at her for a long moment. Then Deeks took a few steps and grabbed her, pulling her towards him and locking lips with her. He kissed her for a long moment, and she kissed him back, getting further and further away from earth with every second that passed and their lips were pressed together.

Kensi pulled back first, and found herself unable to hide her smile felt like some kind of teenager. Only this was much more real than anything a teenager was involved in.

Deeks was grinning too, in that way he had grinned the time he'd pulled her out of the bomb-rigged room and she'd landed on top of him. Kensi marked that moment as the moment that she had started having real feelings for him, feelings that weren't simple flirty habits like she'd had with many men before. And now he was grinning at her like that, and she couldn't help but to keep grinning too.

She chuckled softly and leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He kept his arms around her waist, standing there comfortably with her, enjoying the freedom of holding her without being worried or feeling like the only reason was because of some sort of tragedy.

"Can we _please_ go to bed now, before the sun comes up?" Kensi asked, pulling back from him.

Deeks laughed. "Good idea."

* * *

**An: So like I said, this is probably the last chapter! But I have a semi-idea for a sequel, so watch out for it! And there's still a slight chance I'll post another chapter to this! But please review! **

**On a last note, I just want to thank everybody who read, reviewed, favorited, and alerted! I appreciae you guys so much, thank you so much. I hope I didn't disappoint. **

**BTW, follow me on Twitter & Instagram if you have them! I'm alliecat8697! Thanks and bye! (: **


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